


What Happened in Wishek

by ProlixInSpace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A different decision was made, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate s09e03, Arguably a better one, Autumn, Canon Universe, Case Fic, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Coda, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Drunkenness, Episode: s09e02 Devil May Care, First Kiss, Gift Exchange, Gods, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Love Confessions, M/M, Newly Human Castiel (Supernatural), Of various types, PBExchangeMasquerade, Profound Bond Gift Exchange, Profound Bond Gift Exchange: Masquerade, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21520144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProlixInSpace/pseuds/ProlixInSpace
Summary: “So,” Dean prepares to summarize. “You’re saying that we have to sneak into a god party, with a god-killing weapon, and kill a god, without getting killed by any of his god friends before, during, or after.”Set right at the end of 9x02, Dean makes one different decision: to go after Cas right away. The difficult thing is, Sam’s resident angel refuses to let Cas anywhere near him, so not only does Dean have to find Cas on his own, he also has to buy some time to figure out what to do afterward without raising any red flags.A case -- that’s the ticket. They’ll take a few days and work a case. That’ll give him plenty of time to figure out what to do.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 78
Collections: Profound Bond Gift Exchange: Masquerade





	1. Light Gets in Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarasaurusrex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarasaurusrex/gifts).



> This is a gift for the lovely sarasaurusrex, as part of the Profound Bond Gift Exchange. 
> 
> I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it, but then that might be a challenge because I had a LOT of fun writing it, which probably accounts for its length.
> 
> [Tumblr post here](https://bringmefleshandbringmewine.tumblr.com/post/189225091040/what-happened-in-wishek-chapter-1-prolixdreams)

The last of Dean’s drink charts a burning path down his throat. Warm library light plays off the facets of the antique glass.

Sam’s words from before drift back through his mind. 

_Well, you think he can handle a road trip like that?_

At the time, Dean had been confident, but then came Abaddon and her army, complete with machine guns. Whatever Dean was considering _serious_ before, in terms of demons, _this_ is another level. Even Crowley, King of Hell, always went with subterfuge and mind games to try and get the upper hand, rather than this kind of dumb, brute power. 

It works though, apparently, because Irv’s dead, and if it hadn’t been for Ezekiel, Sam would be equally dead (again) and Dean might not be any better off. As it is, he’s still nursing some cuts to the back of his scalp and neck from where Abaddon threw him through a window.

It’s easy for him to forget how fragile a human can be, with all the hits he takes and bounces back from, all the way to death itself, but right now? He sees it, like the crystalware in his hand: easy to shatter with even a little carelessness.

No matter how clever and how able Cas might be, there’s no way he’ll be _cautious_ enough as a human -- not with the way things are now, not with Abaddon and her demonic militia, and not with vengeful angels hiding around corners. It’s entirely possible there isn’t any such thing as _cautious enough._

Maybe he just _wanted_ to believe that Cas wouldn’t need help. Maybe he’d been treating Cas like an adult to somehow internally compensate for the way he knows he’s treating Sam. However it had started, he’s now plagued with a kind of doubt that feels like he’s just charged through an unexpected cobweb.

Dean hovers in the doorway. 

“I uh--” He starts. 

Sam twists in his chair, expectant, at attention. 

Dean hesitates.

Sam guesses, “You think we should go after Cas.”

“Got it in one.” He sets down his glass.

Sam makes a sound through his nose. Not a scoff, but scoff-adjacent. “What happened to _Cas is a big boy?_ ”

“Yeah, well, normally I’d be behind him all the way, but all this… It’s just a lot, even for Cas. Hell, it was almost too much for _us._ ”

“You sure you’re not just trying to weasel out of research?” 

And then it happens again. Dean hates this part, where Sam’s eyes flash blue-white and his spine turns to rebar. Something in the pit of his stomach lurches every time, like the drop on a roller coaster. Ezekiel seems benevolent enough, but the deal was made in haste and the stakes are too high to fully trust him. Dean would much rather have Sam alone in there. 

_And Sam would agree, if you gave him the choice, but you didn’t,_ says the thought that Dean swats away. 

“I do not advise this course of action.” It’s Sam’s mouth, and Sam’s vocal cords, but somehow not Sam’s voice at all. Ezekiel sounds like the whole-other-thing that he is. It’s a good thing, ultimately -- a hard reminder of what’s really happening, even if it’s unsettling.

Dean sighs. “Of course not, because why should anything ever be easy? Fine, spill, what’s your beef? Would have thought you’d be on board here.”

“Do you not now believe Castiel to be a lightning rod for angelic wrath?” 

“Well _yeah,_ ” Dean justifies icily, leaning on a shelving unit. “Yeah, I do, that’s what’s eating me. This stuff with Abaddon, whatever shit the angels are planning, I feel like we’re being pulled in every direction at once. Last thing I need is Cas getting shivved while my back’s turned.”

Ezekiel doesn’t react, or at least he doesn’t appear to. It’s hard to know what’s really going on in there, since he hasn’t entirely gotten the hang of facial expressions, instead leaving Sam’s face coldly flat, or tensed in configurations that could be in the dictionary next to _uncanny valley._

It seems natural to assume he hasn’t had a vessel in a long time, even before the fall. If that’s the case, Dean wonders why.

“I recognize this fact,” Ezekiel finally answers. “However, the truth remains that where Castiel is, other angels may follow. Do you want to repeat what happened in the hospital? I am not strong enough to fight them. His presence would be dangerous for me, and you, and Sam.”

“You know he stood up for you?” Dean points out. “Called you a good soldier.”

Ezekiel does nothing with Sam’s face, giving the distinct impression that he considers this a non-sequitur.

“Whatever,” Dean says. He doesn’t care about danger to himself, and Ezekiel can go kick rocks, but _danger to Sam_ is enough for him to say, “Fine, I’ll go by myself.”

“Very well,” Ezekiel says with a single, curt nod of Sam’s head. “Intercept him to ascertain his safety if you insist, but do not bring him back here under any circumstances.”

“C’mon, man--”

“If he is here, I will consider my safety compromised, and I will leave. This is not negotiable.”

And then it’s over, before Dean can even argue back. Sam goes slack for a fraction of a second, like he’s been clubbed over the head, and then he’s back, animated, loose-limbed, human. “--Do you think we should head out right away or do you wanna get some shuteye first?”

Dean grits his teeth. Shit makes his head spin every time and now he has to hide his frustration, too. He readjusts. “Ain’t no _we_ here, man. You’re still on the mend.”

“What? Cas is my friend too, you know. And the two of us can drive twice as long. Plus, it’s like you said, it’s turning into chaos out there, what if--”

“What if _nothing,_ ” Dean stops him, more gruffly than maybe he needs to. “You almost got killed less than twenty four hours ago, and besides, _someone’s_ gotta be here to make sure Kevin doesn’t try and bolt again. It’ll be fine. I’m just gonna go, find Cas, and…” Dean stops before he says _bring him home_. He knows Ezekiel’s listening, somewhere in there. “Find Cas. Promise I won’t get into any fights at recess.”

“Fine, fine, but if anything gets hinky, and I mean _anything--”_

“You’ll be the first to know. Now, before he covers any more distance, lemme get on the road.”

And he does, duffel bag in the back, highway peeling away beneath him, Creedence in his speakers. For a minute, Dean thinks he could pretend there’s no such things as angels and it could be any night in 2003, before he started all this crap.

Christ, when he puts it like that, it doesn’t even seem like it’s been that long since then. How does it _feel_ like such an eternity? 

It’s late, and there’s nobody out here. He floors it. If he was going after Sam, following the breadcrumbs would be practically second nature, but he doesn’t have a lifetime of codes and behavior patterns to use with Cas.

He has to do it the old-fashioned way. 

Tracking down the pay phone Cas used gets him his first hit -- apparently the guy left a bit of an impression at the gas station. He flashes a fake badge and demands to see the surveillance footage, alarm burning bright inside him when it shows Cas being knocked unconscious and packed into a car like so much luggage. That worry only grows when a license plate search turns up an accident starring the very same vehicle, just outside of Breckenridge. 

The accident report is beautiful, though: one woman found dead at the scene, and _nobody else._

“Good job, buddy,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Now where’d you go after you lost your wheels?”

It’s a couple hours to the ski-resort town, which is, fortunately, just dinky enough that it’s not too tall an order to follow Cas’ steps (with the help of some people who saw him) to a laundromat, where he recovers a bloody trenchcoat and some more surveillance footage. He leaves the old suit behind, but shells out for the coat to be dry-cleaned while he pokes around the bus depot. Nothing there, so he tries a truck stop, and hits pay-dirt: a janitor saw Cas get a ride with some guy, and she even knows his name (sort of): “Big Otis” 

“I don’t suppose you’d know where this... Big Otis... was headed, miss?” Dean asks, all professionalism, perfectly concealing his inner _whoop_ of victory when she nods and tells him that of course she knows, he almost always drives the same route.

“He’s an alright guy, that Big Otis,” she says, which is also good to hear. 

Coulda made a decent P.I. in a different life, he considers, when it turns out that he’s not that far behind after all. He loops back for the coat before he leaves town, folding it up and resting it in the trunk in a practiced movement that brings back acid-and-oil memories. 

This won’t be like that, he promises himself.

The only problem is really that, if anything, it’s _too easy._ If anyone else is looking for Cas, it’ll be going just as smoothly for them. At every stop he’s made, he’s played the part of secret-agent-man, and emphasized _the confidentiality of his investigation_ , urging people to tell _no one else_ what they’ve told him. Still, he knows that the kinds of people (well, not people, not really) who might be on the same trail won’t hesitate to _make_ them talk.

One thing he does know: getting information that way takes much more _time_ than having it freely given. If his competition resorts to violence, then in a way, that’s to his advantage too, grisly as it is to consider.

All he can do now is drive fast, cross his fingers, and hope that the dicks-with-wings (now with 100% less wings) are as lacking in finesse as he imagines. 

* * *

* * *

Getting into Big Otis’s truck is a terrifying leap of faith -- Castiel has to believe that this man is not possessed by a demon, not a vessel for an angel, not in the employ of any of the above, and, on top of _all that,_ also not an asshole.

It is rapidly beginning to seem that once all of those categories are excised, there aren’t a lot of people left, and most of them apparently drive large vehicles.. 

“You look like a guy who’s got a lot of good stories,” assesses Big Otis, a copper-skinned man with a gentle voice who lives up to his moniker in every possible way. “Tell me some, and you can ride with me. My podcast was gettin’ old anyway.” 

Castiel isn’t sure he can _tell_ those stories in a particularly compelling way, but as a price for a ride goes, it’s not bad, and he does his best. When it becomes clear that Big Otis is either very credulous or truly desperate for entertainment, Castiel begins to edit less, and his stories go over better and better. 

His _best_ lands him at the depot on the other end of Big Otis’s route, watching a gray and hazy Omaha dawn. The wood-print vinyl booth seat in the diner reminds him of a church pew. As long as he drinks his coffee and business is quiet, no one will bother him. He can take his time to figure out what to do next. 

Sanctuary, indeed. 

It’s the best seat in the house, in the corner, up against a large glass window where he can listen to fat raindrops drum on the pane like impatient fingers. He half-watches the trucks come and go in their inscrutable rhythm, trying to soothe himself with the rumble of engines and the hiss of air brakes.

He’s spent much of his existence in places by himself, but this feels like a different thing altogether -- not the comfortable, unbothered solace that an angel might find in a glacial cave or a windswept desert, but an entirely new-to-Castiel kind of alone, a precarious kind, like walking a tightrope without a net.

Most importantly, he tries to keep himself from adding up the impossible weight of the wrong he has done, because every time his mind goes down that road it starts to get overwhelming. It’s harder to fight those thoughts now than before. He’s hungry, he’s exhausted, his head aches, and his feet seem like they might sprout their own mouths and scream from all the walking he did before his ride in the truck. If those things weren’t enough, the twin phantom pains that chase along behind him are acting up again, hot and twisting. 

With his resistance fading, the snowball of guilt and shame threatens to flatten him. 

Hael weighs especially heavily at the moment -- it ended so differently than he hoped. Despite his new humanity, he still feels as though he’s hacking off a limb every time he kills an angel, which seems particularly cruel, as though he is being asked to carry the worst of both worlds.

And he can’t even help Sam -- he keeps coming back to that. Everything that’s happened, and he can’t even help Sam. 

It’s fortunate an angel like Ezekiel found Dean first. His own failure will sting a little less, then.

He considers Ezekiel, and how _he_ would never have wound up in this situation to begin with. Despite the Winchesters’ known aversion to the heavenly host, he imagines that Dean and Sam and Ezekiel will likely be getting along fairly well. After all, even Dean said that his first impression was that Ezekiel was _cool._

They have a lot in common, he reasons: honor, courage, loyalty, and a certain tendency that if you tell them something is dangerous, they’re twice as likely to take that route to the goal. 

Heroic, that’s the word. Not underhanded (and yet still uselessly gullible, as Metatron must have known) the way Castiel has somehow become. 

Sure, Ezekiel is a little by-the-book at times, but he’ll learn quick. Sam and Dean are good teachers, he thinks, jealousy gnawing up through his ribcage.

It’s pitiful. He’s pitiful, and doubly so for the way his imagination gets carried away with pointless things. That’s new. He could think creatively before, if pressed, but now his imagination just _does things,_ vivid and overpowering, entirely without his consent. 

He’s sour enough about it that when the same damn black car he _always_ feels like he’s seeing in his peripheral vision pulls up out front of the diner, he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. His elbows prop him up on the table as he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

It’s nice, the slight ebb of his headache that it brings. One more cup of coffee, he decides in the popping darkness behind his eyelids, he’s got enough for that. Caffeine is cheaper than food and does an excellent job distracting him from hunger.

When he opens his eyes again under the fluorescent lights, he has to blink sparkling spots from his vision. 

He’s _not_ alone at the table. 

As if having materialized from nothing, Dean is there in his _Fed suit,_ looking over a laminated menu with an obviously-staged casual air. For a fraction of a second Castiel is convinced that this, too, is a conjuration of his exhaustion and loneliness, but no: as skilled as his newly human imagination seems to be, this is almost certainly beyond its limits. 

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says with great trepidation, schooling his expression into neutrality as he feels suddenly like something’s fallen out from beneath him and he might cry. He’d much rather not.

“I am the _best,_ ” Dean says with a wide, victorious grin. He smacks the menu against the table. “I’m _actually_ the best.”

Castiel doesn’t know exactly what he’s meant to say to that, so he softens his control and lets his face do what it wants, which is to furrow his eyebrows in confusion.

“Come _on,_ give me some _credit,_ dude. You dropped me _one_ line from _Colorado_ and I tracked you all the way here and found you before any of those flapping assholes got a piece of you? Face it.” Dean spreads his arms wide, palms to the sky. “I’m the world’s greatest detective. I’m Batman.” 

“I don’t understand. Why? Is something wrong? And… how?”

“Is something _wrong?_ ” Dean repeats, half-mocking. “What _isn’t_ nineteen kinds of wrong? Anyway I was about to flirt with the waitress until I got some intel on _Big Otis and the scruffy hitchhiker._ You shoulda moved on sooner, I could have gotten her number.”

Castiel looks down at the pattern of the tabletop. _Nineteen kinds of wrong,_ largely on his own shoulders, the way he figures it.

“Cut that out,” Dean says, sliding the menu across. “Your pity party is harshing my victory buzz.”

“You shouldn’t be here, you have so many things to worry about.”

“Yeah, I do, and this is one of ‘em. I think what you’re trying to say is _thank you Dean, for watching my back and also for the greasy breakfast you’re about to buy me.”_

Castiel finally identifies the emotion that’s twanging down his spine (he had never realized just how _physical_ so many human emotions were) and making his limbs feel heavy: relief. He is relieved. Ashamed and guilty also, but both of those are being knocked down by the sweet, insistent press of relief. 

“Yes,” Castiel says, “thank you.” 

Some part of him that he kept carefully silent until now, he realizes, actually considered the possibility that he might never see Dean again, only putting words to it now that he can be certain it will not be so.

“So?” Dean taps the menu. “Anything you want, as long as it’s unhealthy.”

Castiel feels, then, like he has been given wealth beyond imagining and has to laugh to stop, again, from tearing up.

Dean summons the waitress, who seems openly more at ease with Castiel now that he’s accompanied by a substantially less homeless-looking person. She takes their orders, and Castiel listens, half-numb, to Dean’s recitation of his trip while they wait.

They eat in near-silence at first, both too hungry from their respective journeys (Castiel because he had no money, Dean because he had no time) to focus on anything but a hot meal. 

“This is very kind of you,” Castiel says, around a mouthful of toast, “but I can’t… you must know I’m… I can’t help you, or Sam. I can’t do anything.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said cut it out,” Dean’s voice goes dark, halfway to a snarl, a curtain of chilliness falling in front of his face. And then, before Castiel answers: “It wasn’t cute before -- before purgatory, when you were playing crazy or whatever -- and it ain’t cute now. You know the rules. You break shit, you fix shit. You don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.”

“That’s what I was trying to--” Castiel takes a steadying breath. He bristles a little at the hypocrisy, but knows better than to point out the frequency with which Dean fails to follow his own rules. “When I wanted to help Hael, the angel I told you about, I thought--”

“You thought what? That you’d sing _A Whole New World_ together and she’d realize wings were the friends we made along the way? Christ, it’s like… I mean, what were you _thinking?_ You’re too smart to act this dumb. And it was _way_ too easy to find you. You can’t be this sloppy now that you’re not a walking nuke.” Dean spears a french fry with his fork and sounds uncannily like his father as he mutters, “Next thing I’ll find out all your passwords are _password.”_

“I don’t… own anything that requires a password,” Castiel says quietly, unsure of how else to respond. 

Something about that apparently makes an unexpected impact, because after a long moment of tense silence, Dean’s shoulders drop and he lets out a breath that sounds like it weighs a thousand pounds. 

“Okay,” Dean says, “Okay. Look. I guess I’m a little... on edge. I haven’t slept in… ah shit, look at _you,_ you don’t wanna hear me bitch about that.”

“That bad?” Castiel’s mouth twitches up at the corner. He hasn’t been spending a lot of time in front of mirrors.

“Have _you_ seen you? You look more like you were riding on the top of that truck than inside it.”

Castiel recognizes that while this is an insult on its face, Dean means it with affection. “I feel as though all I do is respond to needs. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion. I assume at some point I’ll start finding the time for grooming, but…” A dark laugh slithers out of him. “You called me a baby in a trench coat. Now I don’t even have _that_.”

“Dude, I _will_ punch you if you keep this up. Anyway, about that, I…” Dean pauses, like he’s suddenly embarrassed, looking everywhere but Cas’ face, “I… got it back for you. The coat. I didn’t get the rest of your crap, though. You’re going to be at the mercy of my fashion sense for awhile, and you’ll probably need a belt--ah c’mon, stop that. Don’t go all little orphan Annie on me.”

It takes a second to realize that what Dean’s telling him to stop doing is _smiling,_ which only makes him smile more. “Dean--” he begins, but is quickly cut off.

“Shut up and finish your food so we can get outta here and I can get some sleep.”

So he does. The ride to the motel is quiet, Castiel too busy enjoying the near-electric joy of being safe in the car at all to talk. The motel itself is apparently terrible, but compared to where he’s been snatching little bits of sleep until now, it might as well be a palace. 

Dean offers Cas the first shower (and tosses him some clean clothes) somewhere in the middle of complaining about everything -- the stains on the walls and carpet, the musty smell, the bed-springs, the orange-and-brown color scheme. Castiel doesn’t remember him being this picky before he had the bunker to go home to.

Under the warm water spray, with the old pipes screeching in the walls, Castiel gets some intuitive sense that now, here, it is safe to let his deferred tears fall. 

Still, he smiles all the while.

* * *

* * *

Dean digs around in his duffel for the fifth of Jim Beam he left there, wrapped in a t-shirt. When he finds it, it’s a lot closer to empty than he was expecting. He upends it and finishes the dregs, not bothering with a glass, before he dials Sam. 

“What’s up,” says Sam, in that relaxed voice he gets after he runs, or stretches or something. It’s still morning, so neither of those things are all that unlikely. Sam really _is_ feeling better, and for a minute, Dean’s sure everything he did is worth it, lies and all. “How goes the search?”

“Good, I found him, listen, is there a case around here by any chance?” Dean asks, dropping Cas’ shoes next to the bed by the far wall, taking the one closer to the door for himself. 

There’s a pause, and for a second Dean is terrified it’s going to be Ezekiel who responds, but then Sam finally says, “Uh… what?”

“I think we should do a case. Me and Cas.” 

Sam laughs shallowly. “Seriously, are you okay? One minute Cas is fine on his own, the next you gotta speed off and find him, first you’re _just gonna pick him up_ and now you want to work a case. You’re being weird, even for--Wait, what do you mean, _around here?_ Where’d you find him?”

“We’re in Omaha.” Dean regrets this truth as soon as it’s out of his mouth. He should have lied and said he was farther out.

“Dude, you’re practically in the backyard. Why don’t you just bring Cas home? We can take him along on something together, after he gets settled in.”

Yes, Dean thinks, that _does_ sound both sensible and pleasant. It’s a pity that what he actually _says_ has to be a completely different thing.

“He’s just, uh--” Dean knows that if he makes up stupid excuses long enough, Sam will figure out that he’s being stubborn and give in whether he believes a word of it or not, so he tosses out a half-lie without putting that much effort into it. “He’s really wigged out right now. I think if we did something useful, he might feel better. Like he’s part of the team still.”

“You do know that not _everyone_ uses stabbing as a coping mechanism?” 

“Then do it for me. Indulge my need to stab,” Dean insists. What he _actually_ needs is about three or four days to figure out what the hell he’s going to do with Cas without raising any red flags, and if they’re on a case, it’ll be easy to buy that time. “Or better yet, assume I’m right for five seconds of your life. There’s gotta be a ghost or something _somewhere_ in the midwest, right?”

Sam sighs so hard Dean has to hold the phone away from his ear. There’s some typing noises, and then: “Uhhh--I don’t know, maybe? Yeah, I guess I found something that looks fishy, if you’re that desperate. You’ll tell me what this is _really_ about eventually, right?”

“Just text me what you got.”

“It’s all the way in North Dakota.”

“You are the worst salesman in the universe, I already said I’ll take it.” What is it, eight hours there? Another nine back to Kansas? He could drag that out to a couple days each way, if he really has to. Plenty of time to hatch a plan. He thinks clearer behind the wheel anyway.

“Fine, fine. Just… be safe, okay? Don’t push Cas too hard. There’s other hunters in the area, so if you need help, or to back out--”

“Yep, gotcha, bye.” Dean hangs up the phone (without giving Sam a chance to say anything else motherly) just as the bathroom door belches steam into the room, probably feeding additional moisture to the happy black mold colony underneath the wallpaper. “Cas! Good timing, we got a case.”

The timing is _actually_ a bit weird, with Dean having found Cas at the diner mid-morning, breakfast eaten like dinner. At the motel, they’ve been behaving entirely as though it were evening. Cas barely manages to stay awake while Dean recites what he knows about Sam’s maybe-probably-case (making it sound terribly urgent and important, so of course they _have_ to do it, but not so urgent they couldn’t sleep first) and he is absolutely out cold by the time Dean gets out of his own shower. 

That’s how they wind up _both_ passed out by 2 PM like a couple of shift workers. Dean stirs once just after sunset, realizes Cas is still down, and doesn’t have the heart to shake him out of what is quite possibly his first rest in a real bed (even a seedy one) since he landed. Instead, he drops back off as well, getting an extra few luxurious hours, for once dreamless and perfect.

The second time he breaks the surface, he forgets where he is, and then he realizes what woke him -- Cas’ sleep is clearly not quite so peaceful. His breathing is uneven and his face is twisted, twitching. He flings one arm half-bonelessly out ahead of him with a miserable croaking sound that probably wants to be a scream.

Dean can see it like some kind of astral projection: a silvery image of himself, standing up, moving to the bed by the wall where Cas is clearly wrapped in a nightmare. Imaginary-Dean takes Cas’ (human) hand and squeezes it, gently waking him with a soft _hey, it’s alright, I’m here._ Cas, then (freshly showered, wearing Dean’s own clothes) flutters open his eyes and looks at him with gratitude and--

And nothing, because none of that happens.

In reality, he sits frozen on the edge of his own bed while the scene plays out in his head, and then when it’s done, he flips on the light in the room and then flips it off again, and when Cas startles awake, he says, “Whoops, sorry, forgot you were there.”

They’re on the road half an hour later, setting out in the middle of the night.

“How do you deal with it?” Cas asks, after an indeterminate time staring out the window. “Nightmares, I mean. They’re terrible.”

“No choice,” Dean says, feeling his jaw tighten. “Gotta sleep sometime. Booze helps. So does killing stuff.”

“Helps you… not have nightmares?” This clearly doesn’t compute. 

“Helps you sleep whether you want to or not.”

“And the… _non-_ alcoholics who _don’t_ kill things? How do _they_ cope?”

Dean can feel Cas’ eyes on the side of his face, can pick up the silent plea for a reason to be optimistic. 

It’s just too bad he can’t provide one. 

“Most people -- healthy, regular people -- don’t…” Dean pauses uncomfortably, and then says, “They don't have ‘em that much, once they grow up. Or they do, but they’re not that bad. We’re different.”

“We?”

“Me. Sam. Now you. You’re in the same boat as us. You’ve seen shit. Done shit. Your head’s got nastier stuff to throw at you than losing a tooth or walking around in your underwear. If you can make it stop, let me know how you do it.”

That laser gaze turns away from Dean, back out the window.

Abruptly, Dean adds, “Anyway don’t ask questions like that, like this is forever or something. We’re gonna get your grace back, and none of that’s gonna matter anyway. You won’t have to worry about this human crap anymore.”

Cas mutters something, but he’s turned away and the music is fairly loud and Dean doesn’t catch it. 

When he asks _what,_ Cas snipes, “I _said_ I don’t deserve it,” and then his mouth clicks shut and he turns away again, hard-jawed in his silence. 

Maybe Dean just has to accept that there’s nothing he can say that will stop this self-loathing tide. He can _feel_ that Cas is tensed for another scolding, and that makes _him_ feel like shit in turn. In order to avoid saying the wrong thing and making things worse, he grits his teeth and says nothing.

Wishek, North Dakota, where three people have been found dead with leaves stuffed into their mouths and throats, is a straight shot up route 29 for most of the drive. That means that when the cloudless dawn finally comes, the sun spills over the serrated edge of the cornfields and golden light floods into the passenger side window. 

Dean complains about the angle of it, how it blinds him, and insists on a pit stop at the rest area up ahead where he can wait half an hour or so until it’s less annoying. 

He doesn’t tell Cas that it lights him up like an old painting of an angel, halo and all.

He throws that on the mile-high compost heap of unsaid things, to rot away with the rest, until it’s all black soil.


	2. Here Be Dragons

Castiel doesn’t have a fed suit, but a shower and shave go a long way, as does Dean’s easy assurance to the coroner that “Agent Sawyer was undercover when he was pulled onto this case, we’re taking it very seriously.” He nods while he says it, and the man behind the desk mirrors the gesture, and just like that, he’s accepting the story. 

Confidence, Castiel realized long ago, seems to function akin to hypnosis, or magic.

The morgue smells a lot worse than Castiel remembers morgues smelling. Or rather, it smells exactly the same as Castiel remembers, but he _feels_ a lot worse about it. Dean must notice his discomfort, because he slips a tube of mentholated lip balm out of his pocket and rubs it on the inside of his surgical mask, and then passes the tube to Castiel so he can do the same. 

It helps, a little, like a lot of things do now that Dean’s scooped him up.

For example, he hasn’t learned all the social conventions around when it is and isn’t appropriate to share bodily needs, so he simply doesn’t do it, ever, even to his own detriment. This concerned him at first when Dean told him it would be an eight-hour drive. He knows Dean well enough to know that, left to his own devices, he would interrupt his travel as little as possible. Within a few hours, though, Castiel noticed that he was making up thin excuse after thin excuse to take breaks. 

He _is_ socially aware enough to know better than to mention it, even in gratitude. Castiel must keep secret the burst of warmth that swells in the hollow of his throat and flutters out through his shoulders and arms like the end of a firework when he catches one of these hidden gestures. If he breaks the shared fiction that none of it is happening at all, then it will stop happening, which is incentive enough to play his role. 

The knowledge is there, even if he doesn’t entirely understand what exactly is so terrible about being caught taking care of someone, why it’s treated like a crime that should be made to look like an accident.

“--Which is why we’re going to need to wear giant trout costumes,” Dean says. 

“What?”

“Just trying to see if you’re listening.”

“I apologize, I was…”

“Spaced out, yeah, I could tell,” Dean grumbles. “If you can’t pay attention to me, at least pay attention to the dead guy.”

Castiel does. Smells aside, he’s still less squeamish than Dean is when it comes to actually digging around in a body, which makes him feel useful. 

Any skin that was exposed at the time of death is covered in erratic lacerations, too many and too irregularly spaced to be claws or knives. Some of them are deep and jagged, most are shallow, a crosshatch of scratches that give the impression of a hiking accident more than an attack. 

The leaves aren’t just in the mouth and throat -- there are shreds all the way into the primary and secondary bronchi of the lungs, and in the maxillary sinus. This is the real (and baffling) cause of death: asphyxiation by foliage.

“Geez,” Dean says, “guess some people don’t know when to _leaf_ well enough alone.”

Castiel identifies the leaves -- white willow -- but then holds his breath instead of saying the words. Is this common knowledge that will make Dean feel patronized? Or is this one of those things that seems obvious to him but isn’t to everyone else, which means he’ll be scolded later if he _doesn’t_ say it?

On risk-benefit analysis, the latter assumption seems safer, so he holds up a handful of bloodied leaves and calls them what they are, out loud. He feels like himself again for a moment, right down to realizing too late that Dean was trying to make a joke.

Dean’s response doesn’t entirely reveal whether he knew what they were, but Castiel thinks he probably didn’t. 

Shedding the nitrile gloves, Castiel is plagued by the sensation that he can _almost_ remember something very important that’s just out of reach, and with that, the pleasant spell is broken, the moment of peace destroyed. That distracting garotte of thought wraps around his throat again and chokes his comfort away, as it does every time he feels something uniquely human, whether he’s struggling with recall, or tasting ketchup, or having a nightmare, or sneezing.

 _This is what it’s like to be human,_ goes the slippery, insidious, inevitable thing, _and you are human because you made an incalculably large mistake that destroyed your home and empowered a madman and killed most of what was left of your family._

How dare he feel sorry for himself, or worse, _enjoy_ it? Especially since that’s what Metatron seemed to want him to do, he is all the more determined not to. 

For this, too, he has no proper barometer. He thinks the guilt must be like the nightmares: something that only seems normal because it’s all he knows, and because Sam and Dean have so extensively modeled it for him. The difference is, _they’re_ clearly strong enough to bear it even with exclusively human faculties, and Castiel isn’t sure that he is. 

* * *

* * *

When search-and-rescue dogs are on the job, and they’re not turning up survivors, it’s easy for them to get frustrated and lose focus. To prevent this, handlers and their associates sometimes hide amid the scene of the disaster or accident in question, and pretend to “be found” (with all the attendant rewards for the dog) to keep the dog’s morale high. 

That is essentially what Sam means to do for himself when he switches over from researching Abaddon (dismal) to researching the thing in Wishek (hopefully less so.)

(Once upon a time, he’d imagined it would be legal work that would give him the pleasure of important information skillfully found, but he’ll take it where he can get it.)

 _White willow_ is an improvement on _leaf,_ but it’s still not perfect. It’s a case of too much lore, rather than not enough. There are willow associations in all kinds of mythology from practically every corner of the globe, particularly among gods of mischief or death, of which there is also no shortage. 

To start ruling things out, he changes angle and digs into the history of Wishek for clues, and he’s only just broken past the surface-level information when Dean calls again. (Far from an annoyance, he’s finding the frequent check-ins reassuring.) 

“I think I love this town,” Dean says by way of a greeting. There’s a lot of noise in the background, but it sounds like the amiable-enough variety -- a restaurant, not a conflict.

Sam cuts to the chase. “Women or food?”

“Food, absolutely _food,_ Sammy have you ever heard of _cheese buttons?_ How did I live so long without knowing these existed?” Dean laments, “I’ve wasted so much time. And they’ve got this thing that’s like pie, if the crust was made of cake--”

“I’m very happy for you,” Sam interrupts. “Have you made any _progress_ , you know, on anything other than raising your cholesterol? _”_

Dean is clearly chewing when he says, “Oh, yeah, I think so. Well, sort of. A guy says he saw bigfoot, which--”

“Right. So it’s something that could be mistaken for bigfoot. Does that mean… large, hairy?”

“And smelly. He said it smelled like mildew.”

“Damp!” Sam says, with much more excitement than the word _damp_ normally merits, because it gives him the monster version of a differential diagnosis. “Big, woolly, and damp!”

“Think it’s your long lost evil twin?” 

“Wh--no, Dean, shut up. The town was settled by Germans-from-Russia. I don’t know how much you know about this but--”

“--Nothing--”

“--Basically they had a pretty rough time of it, both in Russia and on the way over here. _Some_ people who came over to America in that group were really superstitious back in the day, and I mean… old time pagan stuff.”

“Alright, lay it on me, what did they worship that I now have to kill?”

“I think we’re looking at a god called Veles. His area is earth, water, and the underworld. Christians later acted like he was kind of a devil, but from what I was reading, he didn’t seem _bad_ necessarily. A little mischievous but not out-and-out evil.” 

“Well it sounds like he’s suffocating people with leaves,” Dean asserts, “so apparently _something’s_ crawled up his ass. Are you sure it’s a god? I hate gods, they’ve always got those fiddly weaknesses--”

“It’s not like _I_ make the rules,” Sam protests. 

“--It’s always like… you can only stab it with a tusk from a baby elephant, dipped in the blood of a Canadian podiatrist and blessed by Danny DeVito, crap like that.”

Sam’s laughing when he points out that the babies probably don’t have tusks, so that’s definitely a no-go, to which Dean _audibly_ rolls his eyes and says he’s going to start drinking and he’s not going to stop until Sam finds what kills Veles, so it’s on him to get it done before Dean pickles himself.

That’s how Sam winds up digging around in the archives, almost certain he spotted something at least tangentially related down there. Being so close to the dungeon door, in turn, gives him an idea. 

He could ask Crowley. 

Sure, Crowley might not have any idea, but he’s also full of weird surprises, and it’s not as if there’s really any consequence to finding out, given that he’s extremely trapped. Sam’s never seen _Girls,_ but the whole _Marnie_ thing must have meant something to _him,_ and he’s probably bored to tears. If he happens to be in a cooperative mood, he might speed this along considerably. 

Sure, he’ll want something in exchange, but if it’s something annoying, Sam can always walk away and take care of the situation himself. 

No harm in trying.

When he opens the door, Crowley drawls, “Ah! Moose, step into my office. Knew you couldn’t stay away for long.”

Sam grits his teeth and decides on a way to play this that won’t leave him regretting attempting at all. 

* * *

* * *

“Alright, what do you want?” Dean offers, sizing up the liquor store shelves.

Cas shakes his head minutely. “I see no reason my opinion should be given weight. _If_ I like any of these more than the others, I wouldn’t know which.”

“You know that just means I’m gonna get like five different things and make you try them all,” Dean laughs. “Anyway it’s not about liking it.”

“The goal is intoxication, I _am_ aware.”

“The _goal_ is to kill time.” Or at least, the goal is to make it _look_ like he’s killing time while he comes up with a plan for when the case is done.

“We could also assist in the research,” Cas suggests, a bit pointedly. 

Dean shoots back, “You wouldn’t know your way around google if your life depended on it, and _I_ don’t feel like it. Sam’s trapped at home, let the guy feel useful.” 

Yes, it’s the same half-truth argument he used on Sam about Cas. Fortunately, it works even better this time -- Cas accepts it without question, wandering up the aisle, away from the whiskey and bourbon that called Dean over here. He returns a few moments later with a bottle of gin and when Dean asks him why _that_ of all things, (“oh sure, we’ll just grab you a pith helmet on the way back, and maybe some Union Jack underpants”) Cas says that he just likes the look of it. 

Dean gets what he came for: a bottle of whiskey for himself to replace the one he finished. He almost goes for the bottom shelf, but is suddenly genuinely taken with the idea of assessing Cas’ taste in liquor now that he’s human, and picks something _marginally_ classier, alongside a bottle of dark rum.

The motel in Wishek is a shade less grimy than the one in Omaha. They do have a lot in common though: they’re both desperate for an update, style-wise, and have equally unfriendly front desk staff. This one gives Dean a look that could curdle milk when he asks for a few extras of those little paper cups they put in the bathroom. 

The guy does hand over the cups, though, which is all that matters.

In the room, there isn’t really enough space for both of their knees under the tiny table to sit across from each other, so Dean lets Cas take the chair, and he perches on the edge of the bed that’s so close it’s practically a third chair anyway. He places three cups in order of the tint of their contents: one a deep garnet, the next a golden caramel, the last clearer than tap water. After a moment’s thought, he pours the same three cups for himself, so Cas isn’t drinking alone. 

“Is there an order that would be best?” A line appears between Cas’ brows. It’s just like him to think there’s some kind of etiquette or procedure involved here, and the familiar behavior brings a little comfort to them both.

“No rules. Just pick one.”

After what looks like a brief internal debate, Cas goes for the whiskey. Dean knocks his own generous pour back quickly so he can watch Cas’ reaction - a brief wince, and then a look of mild surprise at what is probably the burn as it goes down, but he takes it with reasonable stoicism.

Dean shouldn’t be proud, but he is. 

Their eyes meet. Dean must have some kind of expectant look on his face, because Cas shrugs slightly, answering an unasked question. 

“It’s not that serious,” Dean says. “I just thought, you said you didn’t know what you liked, and hey, you should.”

“I’m curious too,” Cas affirms. He breaks the gaze to look back down at the remaining cups on the table. “I like thinking about it this way. _Experimenting_ with my current condition, rather than attempting to--” He shuts up all of the sudden, seemingly thinking better of that line of conversation.

“To what?” Dean urges.

“Metatron. He thought I should _live a human life,_ with all of the _traditional structures_ that entails.”

“What,” Dean scoffs, “Like you were gonna crash land in a world full of vengeful angels and torture-happy demons, and where the _only people you know_ are hunters who can’t go to the damn supermarket without the world ending... And you were just supposed to, what, get a white picket fence life somewhere?”

“I was thinking mainly just that I’m not sure I make a very good _regular human._ ” Cas uses air-quotes. 

“Not like you’re mister normal when you’re an angel, either” And then, “Don’t give me that look, that’s a compliment and you know it.”

“Dean--”

“I _know_ you’re not the only good angel, when you are one, but the other good ones tend to be a little weird by angel standards too, right?”

Checkmate. Cas has no argument against that.

Dean offers, “I guess I’m trying to say that _not normal_ can be a good thing -- angel _or_ human. Being human, lesson number one: do it your own way and to hell with _regular.”_

It works. The look he gets in response is the closest thing to escaping the stew of self-loathing that has come out of Cas since Dean found him.

The next cup Cas chooses is the gin. Dean holds his breath for this drink (the most meager of the three as far as his own cups are concerned) but it doesn’t help. He’s never been a fan, and now his taste buds helpfully inform him that he isn’t about to start anytime soon. Cas, on the other hand, has gone all bright-eyed. 

“Wait, don’t tell me you actually _like_ it?” Dean tastes the gin on his own breath when he laughs, and reaches for the whiskey bottle to take a swig that’ll drown it out with a more familiar flavor. The first swig doesn’t quite do it, so he tries a second, which is more successful. 

“You... don’t?” Surprise and confusion meet on Cas. “I like it much more than the whiskey. It tastes like… flowers.”

“Yeah, like drinking a rental car air freshener,” Dean jokes, and then, realizing he’s at risk of taking the wind out of Cas’ sails, adds, “but hey, to each their own. Anyway, you still got one more.”

Rum, in Dean’s opinion, is perfectly fine, even tasty, if a little pointlessly extravagant for most situations. Cas, on the other hand, clearly hates it immediately. He doesn’t spit it out, but he looks like he wants to, and his face is _hilarious._ Dean tries to suppress it for a second, but he can’t help laughing. 

“What?” Cas protests. 

“You! You look like a kid taking medicine!”

“It’s disgusting,” Cas justifies. He eyes the cup like it’s betrayed him. “People _drink_ this? Voluntarily?”

“It’s literally made of sugar. Man, it’s a good thing we weren’t betting, I’d have had my money on rum for a winner. No sweet tooth on you, huh?” Dean pours him more of the gin -- filling the little dixie cup a bit more this time -- so he can get the taste he dislikes out of his mouth. 

Cas takes a grateful sip, and then another. “Don’t people traditionally mix these with other things?”

“Yeah, if you wanna waste time, I guess,” Dean jokes, because the best jokes are the true ones.

The same shade of pink on Cas’ lips is starting to appear on his cheeks as well, and his mouth is parted in an expression that, with a little coaxing, has the potential to become a proper smile. Dean’s not sure whether Cas’ tolerance is light or whether his pours are heavy, but given that he’s feeling more than a smidge effervescent himself, he’s willing to entertain that it might be a bit of both.

“Cas, can I ask you a weird question?” Dean leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It brings them close enough that he can smell the citrusy hotel shampoo on Cas mingling with the gin. “If it sucks just tell me it sucks, I don’t wanna piss you off when you seem like you’re having an alright time.”

The eyebrows go down, and then up, and there’s a head-tilt that makes Dean feel like not that much has changed after all, but Cas doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m just curious okay? So don’t...” He stops trying to be delicate about it and just cuts to the chase. He needs to know, because it’s just so weird to think about. “Did that Novak guy like gin too?”

There’s a frozen second where Dean’s sure he’s ruined a perfectly lovely moment, as Cas’ eyes go wide and he holds his breath.

A layer of self-consciousness seems to crack and fall away.

“He…” The proto-smile _evolves,_ not into the evil rictus the leviathans pasted on, nor into the fatalistic cheshire grin of the Cas from Zachariah’s shitshow. What it becomes is a warm, crinkle-eyed beam of revelation. His voice cracks a little, like he’s just solved a great secret of the universe. “No, he hated it. He… Dean, do you remember when I got angry because I couldn’t find God? And I--”

“--Drank some poor liquor store outta business, yeah, hard to forget.” Dean laughs, caught up in the odd memory, alarming at the time, but funny looking back.

“He didn’t love that, generally,” Cas admits. “Not my finest hour, as far as the care of my vessel… But he _truly_ hated gin. Same as you. I’d forgotten completely until you asked.”

There’s a glimmer in his eyes, like the sun on the water on a clear day at the beach, and it takes a moment to register that he’s gone and teared up. It doesn’t go any further than that, Cas blinks it away in an instant, but Dean knows what he saw. 

“Dean I--thank you, really--” Cas swallows a little of the feelings down, so he can speak clearly. “I don’t know if this makes any sense, but being here like this, it feels like… I’m allowed to exist.”

He does get it. He remembers like a flashbulb memory the first crack in the facade, accompanied by _...if you promise not to tell another soul._

The way Dean sees it, Cas _always_ had his own ideas and feelings and opinions, but in the same way a teenager sneaks smokes, trying to avoid being caught with contraband. Now here he is, freely _feeling_ and _opining_ independently of interference from both vessel and hivemind alike.

It’s heady, even secondhand. Dean’s got this autopilot thing in his head that’s nervous, that wants to stopper up the spilling sentiment with a joke or a cough or a _no chick flick moments,_ and it’s a near thing, he _almost_ does it. 

But no, this clearly matters to Cas and the least he can do is be on his side, here. Besides, it’s got him really thinking. If he likes gin, and hot showers, and black coffee, what else could he like? What else might be able to _matter_ to him in a different way than it might once have?

He says, “You _are_. ...Allowed, I mean. And you can--” Dean gestures with that soft, open-handed chop of air he does when something’s serious. “I know it’s not much of a consolation prize for getting kicked off your cloud, but hell, it’s what you got for now, so you might as well experiment. Like things... want things... the whole nine.”

It’s nothing new for them, to have their gazes click into place like this, but it’s vulnerable now, and weighty. It makes Dean feel like he swallowed a lit sparkler. 

Dean often pretends he’s more oblivious than he is. It’s a habit he developed early, when he realized how much easier certain things can be (everything from sneaking around to getting laid to hustling pool) when people underestimate you. 

So he’s gone the last couple years taking the easy way out and pretending he doesn’t notice what’s happening here, even though he absolutely fucking notices.

To acknowledge it, though, would be complicated, it would be awkward, it would be risky beyond belief, and for all his joking about _preferring his dates to have experience,_ there’s a kernel of truth there: as far as he’s concerned, he’s a shitty teacher and an even shittier example as much in relationships as in everything else.

But now, with Cas like this, the part of him that decided it was for the best to not go down this path is getting the absolute _tar_ beaten out of it by the part of him that really, _really_ wants to close the already-small gap between them. One of the consequences of a million first dates is that he can pick up on a _we’re-both-thinking-it_ moment like a shark senses particles of blood in the water, and this one is so obvious it’s practically overwhelming.

So he does it. 

When he leans in and presses his mouth to Cas’, it is against his better judgment and yet, he finds that it is everything he imagined it might be. 

It is finally, finally, finally, like the release of a held breath. 

Cas gasps through his nose and responds immediately, pliantly, his hands lighting on Dean’s elbows and traveling up his arms, seeking stability on his shoulders. Suddenly Dean doesn’t mind the taste of gin at all. He’s letting out a soft hum just thinking about how he’s going to encourage Cas across from the chair to the bed when--

The phone buzzes on the dresser like a downed hornet and they both startle, springing apart as quickly as if they’d been splashed with cold water. 

* * *

* * *

Castiel’s heart rattles in his chest, a startled little thing like a fish in the clutches of an eagle.

He feels _everything_ all of a sudden -- the soft weight of the worn cotton shirt he’d borrowed, the movement of the processed air from the coughing, hissing vent behind him, it’s like he’s accidentally cranked some sensory input setting all the way to ten.

“You should get that,” Castiel hears himself say, voice more dragged and rough than usual, not sure if that should be embarrassing.

He tries to shove aside the feeling that he’s just done something monumentally stupid, as Dean scoops up the phone and answers it, politely tapping the speakerphone button. It’s kind of him to care that Castiel hears whatever news Sam has, but words are turning to mush before they make it through his ears. 

His brain catches up with itself and he allows himself to realize just the cusp what it’s trying to tell him, and then he sets that aside and focuses on the conversation Dean’s having with Sam.

He’s not expecting what he hears, which is that _Crowley_ is now involved.

“You did what?!” Dean splutters. “What did you give him?”

“Nothi--okay, fine, booze. I gave him booze.” Sam’s voice is tinny through the cell phone speakers. “And a book to read.”

“Just that kind of day, I guess,” Dean says toward the mouthpiece, with a knowing glance at Castiel, who doesn’t return it, but does take a sip from the bottle of gin. He watches Dean discreetly do the same from his own, browner bottle, with a silent gesture almost like a toast. “Did he give you some good intel at least?”

“Oh, yeah, no, yeah, he gave me everything we need, because, and I quote, _my real reward is this entire situation.”_ Sam’s Crowley impression is not very good. “So uh, bear in mind I’m just the messenger, here.”

The first half doesn’t sound so bad. The weakness is _fiddly,_ as Dean had feared on his last call to Sam, but they actually have pretty ready access to both willow wood and a string of fate to tie around it. It’s the second part, the part that details how they’ll have to _get_ to Veles, that’s full of obvious problems.

According to Sam, Crowley was beside himself with delight when he explained the _festival_ \-- a bunch of misfit god-creatures, getting together and dressing up in costumes for some kind of event that Crowley knows all about, because he apparently has a history of trying to attend without getting caught.

“They’re not real gods,” Sam explains. “At least, not… I mean, Crowley said they’re impressions, or _incarnations,_ or something. Like shadows of the originals, brought over by immigrants way back when, but nowadays they have nothing to do, so they... dress up in masks and throw each other parties, I guess. Also, it sounds like he crashed it and got bounced. I think he’s hoping you piss them off or get killed or both.”

Crowley, Sam explains, even offered to throw in a bonus, since they’re so eager to do him at least one of those two favors: a spell, meant to be applied to a mask, that will at least temporarily conceal the problematic fact of not being gods. 

“You’re still gonna have to be careful,” Sam says. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like it worked that well for _him_ but it’s probably better than nothing. Should get you in the door, at least.”

“So,” Dean prepares to summarize. “You’re saying that we have to sneak into a god party, with a god-killing weapon, and kill a god, without _getting_ killed by any of his god friends before, during, or after.”

“You’re sure you don’t need backup?” Sam offers. “I’m not comfortable with the way Crowley’s acting like it’s his birthday.”

Dean takes him off of speaker for some reason. 

Castiel doesn’t understand why he doesn’t accept the offer, backup sounds like a good, smart idea. 

Still, Dean spits out, “Nope, too many cooks yadda yadda, we got this, just send over the mask spell, it’ll be fine” and hangs up. 

A couple more texts follow, with some appended helpful information, like the nearest place they can buy a mask (three hours away, all the way in Fargo) and the coordinates and timing to get into the god party. 

The last message is all caps: DO NOT EAT OR DRINK ANY GOD FOOD.

“Great, Just great. This just gets better and better,” Dean complains under his breath. 

Castiel doesn’t say anything. What would he say? The alcohol has dulled his already fairly shaky _people skills_ , and he can’t even begin to guess what the appropriate excuse is, so he just picks up the gin bottle, crosses the space and slips into the parchment-yellow light of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and pressing in the lock on the doorknob with a _click._

He turns on the shower, all the way to its hottest setting, but doesn’t get into it. Instead, he just sits on the floor with his back to the wall and closes his eyes. 

The space is tiny, and it doesn’t take long to fill with vapor. For a minute, while they’d been drinking and talking, the imaginary fist he’s always feeling around his skull loosened, and his phantom wings un-clenched, but the hot sparks of pain (that cannot possibly exist) have now returned, redoubled. 

It’s not real, he keeps telling himself. It can’t be real. He’s a human, humans don’t _have_ wings, so his wings _cannot hurt._

As if trying to drown out the unreal sensation with a legitimate one, he presses his shoulder blades harder against the orange tiles, until pain comes, but it doesn’t work. He still feels it, like he’s being tased or jabbed with a hot poker in the flesh (that isn’t there) below the feathers (that are gone.)

Castiel takes a deep drink from the bottle of gin and chases it with a lungful of steam.

Dean likes him this way, he thinks. 

Dean _likes_ this. 

It’s an unfair thought, perhaps a _cruel_ thought, but it must be so. What else could explain this? It isn’t as if he didn’t want to kiss Dean - he did, he absolutely, unequivocally _did._ In the moment, he wanted it so much, the wanting seemed to take over his entire body, completely implacable. Even thinking of it now, a pleasant heat seems to roll through him, and he can almost feel the ghost of Dean’s lips on his. 

Before (before he fell, before the bright and miserable line of before and after) there’d been times when he considered it. He’d see kissing -- on televisions in passing, or in advertisements, or, most impactfully, in Jimmy Novak’s own memories. He isn’t foolish enough not to have noticed the pattern, the way Dean would sift up through his thoughts right after, like gold emerging from a swirl of sand and dirt in the mesh of a pan.

For an angel to fall in love in anything even vaguely resembling the same manner as a human (at least enough to be compatible with one) is not completely unheard of -- Nephilim _were_ a problem at one point, after all. Historically, though, it _is_ rare enough that the “official party line” is to doubt those tales, preferring instead to believe that all of those relationships were innately unethical, and the result of angels too broken to realize they were doing something wrong. 

Castiel cannot know what he _used_ to think about that. He has no memory of defending the concept, but then, he wouldn’t, would he, after what Naomi did to him? Now, the truth is so clear it’s almost funny anyone could be confused.

It seems like a curse to have it now. Dean’s kiss is the Dead Sea fruit, turning to ash in his mouth, as he is certain, now, that it only happened because he is human. 

Only now, as he physically embodies his own greatest failures. Only now, as he struggles against sourceless pain at his back like the whip of a flagellant. Only now, as he smothers beneath a mask that he donned years ago and now cannot remove.

Only now can Dean love him. 

Blame and spite visit him like fae creatures, and he listens to their song of _How dare you? How dare he?_

He takes one last sip and then caps the bottle of gin and pushes it across the floor, away. 

Not one to miss an opportunity anymore, he makes use of the proximity to the toilet, turns off the shower, and emerges back into the hotel room. The air is cool and dry compared to the wet heat he’d filled the bathroom with, and the lights are out, a contrast that leaves his human eyes blinded. He flips the bathroom switch to _off_ as quickly as he can, not wanting to be a disturbance if Dean’s already fallen asleep.

He isn’t sure how long he was in there.

For a moment, in the dark, he hovers, searching (whether he wants to or not) for some evidence of whether Dean is asleep or awake. 

There’s nothing conclusive one way or the other. 

Castiel stumbles over Dean’s shoes, and makes his way to his own bed. Solidly drunk, he lies upon it as it lists beneath him, as though he is a mariner on an ancient and creaking ship that he has sailed off the edge of the map. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is Dean eating in Wishek?
> 
> Why, it's the Wishek, North Dakota specialties: Cheese buttons, and Dakota Kuhen! (The latter being the cake-pie thing)


	3. Into the Woods

“How do I look?” Dean asks.

“Like an oryx,” Castiel answers, since that’s the point of the mask. It’s made of stiff leather and goes all the way down to his upper lip, silver and black, complete with twisted, gently curving horns and little ears beneath. A big, black costume jewel rests in the center of its forehead, giving it a vaguely occult air. 

“Fine, be that way,” Dean says, preening in the rear-view mirror, his penchant for dressing up strangely rearing its head again. “ _I_ know I look cool. Also, I’m disappointed, there were _so_ many deer puns available and you used none of them.”

“An oryx isn’t a deer,” Castiel says without looking. His hangover headache added itself to the daily headache and now it’s decidedly uncomfortable to turn his head too quickly. 

Because it seems there is no distance a Winchester considers unreasonable to drive, and because Wishek is too small a town to support any shops artsy enough to sell masks, they’d gone all the way to Fargo and are almost back, probably 20 minutes out.

_Any rules for the masks?_ Dean asked Castiel to text earlier, when they were driving into the larger town. _Pick what you like,_ came the reply from Crowley, passed through Sam. When they did the spell (in the parking lot on the way back) Castiel was unsettled by his inability to feel the magic working. 

His own mask resembles a sort of coppery-bronze clockwork fox, with pointed ears and a long, narrow snout. He thought it looked graceful and interesting at first, but now that he’s wearing it, it just seems to get in the way, with the nose bumping into things when he turns, and the ears scraping the top of the car if he sits up straight. 

Castiel isn’t talking, partially because of the uncomfortable sense of discord between them, and partially because he’s still thinking about the _other_ mask he saw in the shop, the raven one. He’s thinking about the hooked, wicked beak beneath a stern brow, and the attached black feathers that glinted rainbow in the light, like oil on pavement. As soon as he ran his finger up the side he knew they were fake, just plastic, but eye-catching nevertheless. 

The word for how he felt came to him easily: it made him covetous, but he couldn’t let Dean see that. Castiel himself didn’t mind how on-the-nose it was, how it recalled what he’d let Metatron take from him, but he didn’t think he could take being teased over it, not now. To avoid that risk, he didn’t even touch it when Dean was looking, and scooped up the fox instead. 

Now he regrets not just going for it, even as he tells himself how unimportant it is. It’s a tool for getting him into a place he needs to be, so that he can do what they’re here to do, an object with a purpose.

It doesn’t matter what it looks like. 

Still, he thinks he’d have liked the raven better. He wonders what it would look like not only on _him,_ but also on a wall, as a decoration, as a thing he could _have_ , just for himself. He could go back there, when the case is done. His mind skips conveniently past the part where he has no idea how he’d get there, or pay for it without anyone finding out, and goes straight to the part where he hangs it up on a nail and it stands on guard, looking out over exposed brick and poured concrete.

And, oh, he wants to go back a few minutes and think about something else, he wants to return to not knowing this about himself: that he when he imagines home, he thinks of the Men of Letters bunker, even though he’s barely spent any time there at all. 

“This is the spot?” Dean asks, hand poised over the ignition, ready to let the car go quiet. 

Castiel looks down at Dean’s phone screen. The little dot that signifies where they are is on top of the little dot that signifies where they’re meant to be: in the middle of a withered field full of overgrown-but-yellowed grass and little else. He says nothing, and just turns the screen so that Dean can see it. 

They aren’t talking about last night. They’re barely talking at all. 

His thoughts are a burning, complicated tangle, much of which has, he is certain, no polite or casual way to be expressed. 

Currently, all Dean is doing is squinting and frowning at the softly rolling landscape on the other side of the windshield. “I don’t get it. This is definitely the spot? Are you sure you entered the coordinates right?”

“I may not be as useful as I was, but I am able to read and identify numbers.” Castiel scowls, but the mask probably obscures it, blunting the conveyance of his irritation.

“Well then how come we’re sitting in an empty field?”

“Sunset hasn’t quite finished,” Castiel points out. “Maybe something happens then.”

As if on cue, the top edge of the sun winks out below the horizon, and something _does_ happen, where _something_ can be defined as _an entire forest._

For a second it feels like a minor earthquake. Almost all at once, bulbous trunks surge up through the ground around them like thousands of wooden landmines all triggered at once. The pillars blur toward the sky in seconds with a creaking roar like an old house in a windstorm. Bits of bark peel away here and there to make space for branches and twigs which, in turn, burst forth with a canopy of masses upon masses of leaves in warm hues ranging from burgundy to lemon and everything in between, without a single shade of green in sight.

There’s a shout from Dean, swallowed in the sound of the mass settling of the foliage, which, on this scale, sounds almost like a very brief rainstorm, like reality itself hissing out a sigh all at once. 

And then it’s done, and they are deep in the woods. 

Dean twists to look into the back seat and out through the window above it, clearly surveying whether his car was damaged. 

Finding nothing, he turns. “You good?”

“Unharmed,” Castiel affirms. Were they spared from a grisly impalement deliberately, or was it luck? There’s no way to know. He (perhaps foolishly) hopes Dean might admit to being wrong to doubt his coordinate-inputting ability. 

It doesn’t happen. Dean gets out of the car, setting foot on the new carpet of old leaves, and closes the door behind him. 

The first thing Castiel does when he’s among the trees is touch one -- mainly, he just wants to confirm what sort of illusion this is, without access to the methods he’d normally use. 

Naturally the whole area must be cloaked somehow, given that there haven’t been any reports of giant autumnal forests appearing on the plains, but from the inside of whatever this is, the trees are firm, substantial. If he were to wake up here, he wouldn’t realize it was manufactured, nor would he correctly guess the location.

The thick trunks mostly don’t branch until well above what he could reach to climb, but he wonders what he’d see if he could.

The woods go on and on, or at least the illusion makes it look like they do, dense enough in the distance that there’s nothing to be seen in any direction but deep brown-black tree trunks punctuating a sea of red and yellow vegetation. 

“I feel like I’ve been Mary-Poppins’d into a postcard of New England,” Dean comments. Most of his face is covered by the oryx mask, but the line of his mouth is curved just a little, suggesting that whatever that’s supposed to mean, it’s is a positive comparison. 

If so, Castiel has to agree. The wind kicks up and more leaves flutter to the ground around them. It’s genuinely beautiful. It even _smells_ real, full of damp geosmin, the sparkling terpene scent of abundant living wood, and the sweetness of autumn’s gentle decay. 

A second gust follows, colder, suggesting a hint of winter to come. 

As illusions go, he can’t really complain about this one, but he can’t let himself get too distracted. “How do we--” 

“--Ssh--” Dean interrupts, one hand in the air commanding Castiel to halt.

They both stop moving to listen intently. Castiel isn’t used to Dean hearing things first, and he can’t help bristling, but from Dean’s posture, it’s clear that this is exactly what’s happening. Only with concentration does Castiel pick up on the sound. The drums make themselves known first, and, if he really listens, he can detect indistinct voices.

“After you,” Dean half-whispers, clearly conscious that perhaps being audible could go both ways, and they set off toward the noise. The crunching of dried leaves is undeniably satisfying, but makes it challenging to be very stealthy. 

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Castiel asks. If it were angels, for example, they would almost certainly know immediately if a perimeter had been breached, so the question seems relevant. 

Dean just shrugs, of course.

They come upon the large clearing quickly, maybe a little _too_ quickly, leading Castiel to suspect that movement through the wood is not entirely subject to normal rules -- not exactly a shock, but good to note. If they’ve been detected, no one is acting like it. 

“We shouldn’t be sneaking in,” Castiel says. “We’re meant to be pretending we belong, right? So we should go in the front… whatever that is.”

Dean isn’t convinced. “Sam said the mask spell isn’t that powerful, I don’t know that we should let anybody get that good a look at us, if we can avoid it. I say we get in there, find our guy, stake him, and sneak out again. It’s not like we can take on a party full of gods.”

They peer around the tree to get another look at the open space ahead. The shape and structure of it recalls fractals, or crop circles, with one main circular clearing, linked in loose tangents with other, smaller clearings surrounded tightly by trees and bushes.

Through the gaps, Castiel can see a mini-clearing with a golden tent, unique, as the rest of them sport little campfires at their centers instead. The whole place _vibrates_ with energetic music, mainly bells and drums, though there’s no band to be seen.

In the middle of the main clearing is a tall tree with a broad canopy, around which a small swarm of glowing honeybees loosely meander, each one a tiny living lantern. 

And of course, there are quite a few gods. There doesn’t seem to _be_ a front gate -- they’re all filtering in through the little roomlets most immediately adjacent to the primary glade. While most are at least somewhat humanlike in appearance, some have unusual numbers of limbs, odd physical size, or inhuman parts, like wolf-ears or ox-tails, even _before_ accounting for the masks they wear, and there is a rainbow of impossible complexions.

They are disguised by their masks, but only in the loosest sense. They are not hiding what they are, in the way of most gods faced by hunters, rather they are merely toying with the aesthetic of concealment. 

At least it should make Veles easy to identify.

There is no struggle with recall, this time. Castiel knows quite a few of these guests on sight. It’s fortunate that they’d likely have no way of recognizing _him,_ since his vessel is different and his grace is gone, because he also knows that most of them absolutely despise angels.

“Fine, maybe you’re right,” Castiel admits to Dean, suddenly less than confident that they’d stand up to much scrutiny, spell or no spell. 

“Sneaking?”

“Sneaking,” Castiel agrees reluctantly. 

A huge buffet table in the shape of a crescent moon butts against one curved edge of the clearing, and _that’s_ where they decide to enter. The tabletop can hardly been seen through the cornucopia of food, some of which _looks_ fairly human (though the mix is highly eclectic) and some of which is unrecognizable.

They get into the thankfully thornless shrubbery near the point of the crescent and catch one another’s eyes, which is communication enough for this -- a kind of _Ready? Ready._

And with that, they slip from the bushes into the clearing and around the edge of the table seemingly without incident -- no one and nothing confronts them straight away, at least, which is better than the alternative. 

“I gotta admit,” Dean hisses, “this is pretty cool. I can see why Crowley wanted in.”

“I imagine it helps that demons, unlike humans, can partake of the food and drink safely,” Castiel notes.

They stand close, miming a more intimate conversation than they’re having so as to deter introductions, but actually scanning discreetly for some sign of their big, wooly quarry.

“I think we should split up to look for him,” Castiel whispers. 

Dean rolls his eyes, a green movement through the holes in the mask. “‘Course you do.”

“What?”

“Can’t even get three steps into this damn thing and you’re already trying to run off. Hell, at least you can’t just--” Dean does this thing with his hands, like a shadow puppet butterfly taking flight. 

“Are you saying you’re _glad_ I don’t have my wings?” It comes out in a half-growl, which isn’t exactly Castiel’s intention, it’s just what happens. He can’t help thinking how much more embarrassing this would be if he’d picked that raven mask after all. Just knowing he _wanted_ to makes him feel the ghost of that humiliation. 

“So what if I am?” Dean challenges back, his jaw set. 

“I knew it. I _knew_ it, last night, I--” Everything he was afraid was true seems to be, so he huffs out a dry, angry breath as the day’s miserable tension between them begins to boil over at last. It's obviously a less-than-ideal moment. Still, Castiel finds the pull of the argument impossible to resist.

Some of the light-bees hover a bit closer, twinkling distractingly. 

“Knew what?” Behind the mask, it seems like Dean’s brows might be furrowed. His mouth, exposed beneath the bottom edge, is a hard line. 

Castiel accuses, “You’re happy about this whole thing, aren’t you? You’re actually… _pleased._ The… worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and you _like it.”_

“Cas, whatever’s going on here, this isn’t the time for it, and you know it.” Dean’s obviously feigning less understanding than he _must_ have. “We have a job to do.”

“Then why didn’t you just say _no, we shouldn’t split up?”_ Anger, at least this _kind_ of anger, in a human body, is new. Castiel feels it in his legs, a sharp, hot bullet traveling from hip to ankle and from shoulder to hand. Dean _started_ this with that crack about flight, and now he’s acting like the hard left turn of the conversation is _Cas’_ fault? “Why did you have to--”

He doesn’t get to finish, because with a dark blur, Dean is gone. A wild and powerful gust of wind hits him and _only him_ , though Castiel feels the freezing edge of it ruffle his hair, and it sends Dean flying across the clearing. 

Dean utters a short scream, mostly from surprise.

The whole operation, gone to hell in minutes.

Blessedly, there’s no impact. He never hits the ground or a tree or anything at all, because the wind’s got him by the ankle. A tornado-in-miniature holds his foot and dangles him a couple of feet above the fluttering leaf litter below.

The wind pries away the cheap fasteners of Dean’s mask, and it falls right off his face. A finger of air sends it flying upward, where it can be conveniently caught by the god at fault.

There’s a wind at Castiel’s back, now, not violent like the one that’s taken Dean, but insistent, pushing him along in the same direction. If he doesn’t move, he’ll fall down, so he obeys in a clumsy, stumbling sort of manner. It pushes up over his head and his mask slips off him and rolls away like just another leaf, right into the hands of the same assailant that’s got a hold of Dean. 

Can he feel the spell? Or do they just look like idiots? They’ve been made, that much is certain, but the degree of trouble they’re in remains, like Dean, up in the air. 

It doesn’t matter now whose fault anything is. 

The assembled heads -- large, small, high, low, fleshy, hairy, all sorts -- have already turned to regard the commotion with interest, and from what Cas can make out of the expressions behind their masks, no one is particularly _alarmed,_ but rather amused, or intrigued. 

He isn’t sure if that bodes well or poorly. 

The men who stand on either side of Dean (clearly the attackers) seem to be twins, identical in their height (tall) and build (wiry) and wearing masks that reveal enough of their fair faces to show that those are the same too. 

They’re even dressed identically, in flowing silvers and grays, with the only difference being their masks. The man on the left wears a mask designed to evoke a white swan, whereas the man on the right’s swan is black. 

“Boreas,” says the white swan man to his twin, his voice an energetic tenor. “Here’s the other one, just like you said. Oko’s bees were right as always, clever things. Of course, it helps that these two apparently don’t know themselves very well”

Oh. Boreas. Then the other one… Castiel knows them, at least a bit.

The white swan man examines the masks, and it hits Castiel that _pick what you like_ was an instruction, not permission. He wonders if Dean’s figuring it out too.

The black swan man, Boreas, answers in his own bored, chilly tone. “I don’t know why you waste precious energy on him, Notus, when he’d obviously have followed the other one on his own.”

“You’re the winds,” Castiel says, reaching for the blade tucked into the back of his pants, not touching it yet, but ready to, if things devolve. An angel blade might not easily kill anything here, but it _could_ do damage, he’s certain of that.

Notus titters, clearly flattered to have been recognized. 

Castiel uses it. It matches his prior brushes with Greek gods, especially the minor ones -- in his minimal experience he’s found they love nothing more than themselves. “Notus, the wind of autumn, and Boreas, the wind of winter.” He squints in the spillover gusts. “You aren’t… usually in the same place at the same time, are you?”

“We aren’t,” Notus answers, half-preening. “But inside this party, it’s late autumn, which is the only time we get to spend together.”

“It would be tragic if that were ruined,” complains Boreas, haughty and distant.

“Cas,” Dean grumbles, “You wanna stop flirting with your old pals and get me outta here?”

“He’s so _noisy,_ isn’t he?” Notus gives Dean a withering look. 

“They all are,” Boreas intones. “I _despise_ hunters.”

Of course. He knew they’d been detected as invaders, but this is particularly bad. Did the masks do _anything?_ The next time Castiel sees Crowley he’s going to kill him. 

As if being immediately discovered couldn’t get worse, Boreas twirls his finger and the little whirlwind holding an increasingly red-faced and shivering Dean above the ground judders back and forth, shaking him until everything in his pockets and clothes comes loose. 

His phone falls, then his keys, his wallet, and his stake. 

Castiel dives for the weapon but ends up with nothing more than dirty hands. With a gust of warmish wind (warm, at least, in comparison to Boreas’) Notus has already sent it skittering away. It tumbles across the bulging roots of the central tree. 

A plump, youthful-looking goddess with skin the color of a ripe peach and a flowing pink dress startles at the sight. She scoops it up from the forest floor. 

Pomona. 

Castiel never met her himself, but he can name an angel or two who has. Her face is almost entirely covered by a mask loosely inspired by a horse’s head, but her posture suggests a gentle unhappiness. 

She looks at Castiel, and then at the two gods of wind. “Is this... what I think it is?” 

Boreas drops Dean and turns to Pomona, brushing the offending object in her hands with a finger. “Willow, with a string of fate? What else could it be?”

Dean moves to run, but Notus knocks him down with an almost effortless gust. When Dean struggles to his feet again, Notus upends him once more with a light chuckle. He seems less like a swan, to Castiel, and more like a cruel cat. 

“What is the _meaning_ of this?” Pomona demands. If Castiel isn’t entirely mistaken, she sounds like she’s holding back tears. “Why?”

Notus scowls and answers before Dean or Castiel has a chance. “They’re hunters, Pomona. They’re just killers. It’s what they do, do they really need a reason?” 

“Yes!” She stamps one leather-slippered foot and brandishes the thing. “Look at this. This isn’t some… they aren’t here to kill all of us, just--”

“Veles,” Dean says, getting to his feet after being knocked over for a third time, refusing to stay on the ground. 

“Well?” Notus says. “If you have an answer for her, give it, killer.”

Boreas adds, “Why bother with the reason? Just kill them both. Hunters don’t usually have many friends to miss them anyway. I think it’s insulting, that they thought they had a chance -- coming here to kill a god and they can’t even work in tandem without fighting.”

“Mm,” Notus agrees, “It _is_ pathetic.”

“We _can_ explain,” Castiel cuts in. Boreas is getting into dangerous territory and he can’t let that sentiment spread. One thing he’s learned from Sam and Dean is that if you can keep the conversation going, you can buy time to try and escape or get the upper hand. 

“Do it then, before my brother gets bored and takes the air right out of your lungs,” Notus commands.

Castiel glances around, realizing that there isn’t as much of a crowd as he'd first thought. His eyes rest on the tall orisha with the phallic staff and the insectoid mask whose messenger bees apparently serve as living surveillance cameras at this little fête. He had never spent a lot of time in what is now Nigeria, but Oko is famous enough that he’s aware of him anyway.

He’s famous for justice and arbitration. Perhaps his presence is a good thing. If it’s _his_ kind of party, maybe they can be reasoned with.

A brief conversation without speech passes between Castiel and Dean. 

_I’m going to tell the truth,_ says Castiel’s gaze. He wants to keep the focus on the Veles-killing weapon and not get searched himself, if he can avoid it.

_Go for it,_ answers Dean’s lip purse and minute shrug. 

“We were doing what we had to,” Castiel appeals. “Veles is killing people. Killing humans, brutally.” 

“I don’t know if that matters to you all,” Dean says with a certain prickly pride, “but it matters to us.”

It does, apparently, matter to them, because an unpleasant-sounding murmur passes among the gathered group, and then everyone stops talking altogether. 

The cluster parts, creating a path for the approach of a deeply regal goddess. She herself is the color of gold or turmeric, shot through with whorls of burgundy freckles, and more gold is draped about her, across her body and woven into the black and red cascade of her hair. Rings and bracelets adorn all four of her hands, and her ankles and toes as well. Her mask is huge and elaborate, calling to mind both a parrot and a crown, and her clothes jangle with every graceful step.

Not only does she _look_ like a queen, but the party guests seem to regard her as one, even among gods. 

“Gauri,” Notus addresses. There is a spark of insolence in his tone, but his eyes are averted and he’s no longer smiling. 

She ignores him, and looks at Castiel and Dean -- quite literally down her nose at them, since she’s easily a head taller, and for a moment, Castiel wonders what the two of them must look like to her. Like howler monkeys wandering into a cocktail party, perhaps. He shuffles closer to Dean, until the backs of their hands brush. 

“What is the meaning of this intrusion? Do you truly believe that Veles has been killing humans?”

“Lady,” Dean says without any respect at all, for which Castiel shoots him a glare. It doesn’t help. “I saw his victims with my own eyes. Lungs all full of willow leaves. You tell me if that sounds like his M.O. or not.”

Her painted lips press together in muted consternation. 

Dean for some reason decides to add, “And where the hell is he, anyway? Isn’t he supposed to be here?”

She doesn’t answer, but rather straightens and turns. “Pomona?”

Pomona bursts into tears completely this time, reaching up under her mask to wipe them away. She says something barely-coherent through her sobs, Castiel catches the words _grandfather_ and _knew he was angry,_ but not very much else. 

“You were meant to be monitoring him,” Gauri says, almost entirely devoid of sympathy. She turns back and addresses the winds. “Notus, Boreas, keep them busy, don’t hurt them too badly for now, but don’t let them cause any trouble. I will investigate. Oko, Pomona, come with me. Pa-cha, Amaethon, Ninurta, make sure no further problems arise. As we all know, hunters sometimes have backup. Everyone else, go about your business. I urge you not to let the night be wholly ruined.” 

Castiel and Dean look at each other, clearly neither liking the sound of that _for now._ Gauri departs again along the same path that brought her to the scene, followed by a proud Oko and a skittering, downcast Pomona, still carrying the stake. 

“Shit,” Dean says under his breath. 

All three of them vanish into the clearing with the golden tent, and are gone from view.

The beak-nosed god with a mask like several locusts joined together and a lower body like a bell mutters something about hunters being the _worst._ The god next to him, nodding along, is wearing a mask of a stag’s face, with antlers so large and elaborate that it’s amazing he can move his head at all.

The stag says, “...Probably the last time we were going to get to see him, too.”

“Boreas,” Notus says, sidling up to his brother. 

“Yes, Notus?”

“We’re meant to keep them busy.”

“Indeed.”

“Perhaps we can do them a favor in the process.”

“Ah,” says Boreas, catching on. “To stop them squabbling?”

“The way mother Eos used to do,” says Notus with satisfaction.

“When we would fight as children,” Boreas says, his words leaden with nostalgia. “Yes.”

Dean tries to back away, and Castiel with him, but neither of them get far. Notus, still holding both masks, passes Castiel’s fox to Boreas. They each hold a mask in the palm of their hands, and do something that looks, ludicrously, like a high five. 

The last thing he sees as the autumnal world around him splinters into shadows is Dean, collapsing next to him. He tries to shout, but the sound is choked in his throat, the way it was in his nightmares. 

After that, he doesn’t see anything at all.


	4. This is Our Get-Along Shirt

  
  


For a second, Dean thinks he’s in heaven, and not in a good way. It looks like the angel side of heaven, the way Cas describes it: all sterile and white. He winces against a light that seems like it’s everywhere. As his pupils adjust, he takes in his surroundings, mostly glass. 

Wall after wall of perfectly clear glass confuses his eye, like some kind of infinite Windex advertisement. He tries to pivot, or reach out, but his body feels desperately heavy, half-paralyzed. If there’s one thing Dean knows about himself, though, it’s that he’s a stubborn piece of shit, so he pushes against whatever’s binding him from the inside. 

With significant effort, he gets to his feet and turns. 

“Cas!” He shouts, banging his palm against the glass wall between them with a loud, reverberating _thunk._

Cas opens his eyes and is immediately overcome by a visible wave of fear. No, not just visible--Dean _feels_ the fear hit him too, not his own, but Cas’, crawling up _his_ spine and constricting _his_ breath. 

_Heaven it’s heaven we’re dead and they’ve sent us right into Naomi’s clutches,_ echoes Cas’ voice in Dean’s head, showing him a photo negative of Naomi’s face.

That’s new. 

The anxiety sputters out when he looks at Dean, replaced with confusion, which Dean also feels, though now it’s unclear whether this emotion is coming from inside or out.

“Dean?” Cas asks. 

“I thought it was heaven too,” Dean says. “I don’t, anymore. I don’t think we’re dead. That Gauri lady specifically said not to kill us, right?”

“I can’t move,” Cas says, annoyingly not answering the direct question. _Probably not dead, no, this can’t be heaven,_ adds the shadow of Cas’ voice.

“Yeah you can, it’s just a pain in the ass, look.” Dean grits his teeth and fights what seems like incredible gravity to raise his right arm. 

Cas watches intently, and goes to copy him, a test of their circumstance. It’s hard for a moment, but then as his arm reaches the target position, suddenly the gravity lets up and Dean’s arm feels normal again, extended as effortlessly as any other time. When he tries to move it from that position, though, he gets that _locked down_ feeling again. 

“Try to lower your arm,” Cas says. 

“I am trying.”

“But you can’t.”

“Well…” Dean winces and pushes down on the nothing below his arm until it gives way. 

Then Cas starts to lower his own arm too, and Dean’s own swings to his side without any difficulty. For a moment, he can feel Cas appraising his posture, and, with that accomplished, Cas gets to his feet with very little struggle. 

When he tries to move out of that position though, to return to sitting, or to crouch, he finds it almost impossible. Dean can feel the little spike of alarm and irritation as if it were his own. The wheels are turning in Cas’ head, to be sure, but there aren’t words, at first. 

“Dean,” Cas says, “On the count of three, cross your arms. One, two, _three.”_

They both do it, and it’s no trouble at all. 

_Have to do the same thing,_ Dean hears. He tries not to think about anything at all, because there’s no way this thought-catching thing doesn’t go both ways, but it’s the old don’t-think-of-an-elephant problem and all of the sudden he’s remembering their kiss and feeling like he was an idiot and realizing that this whole situation is _his_ fault, because just _had_ to go and beg for the case to keep Cas away from Ezekiel instead of just taking him fishing or something and _faking_ that they were on a case--

“What?” Cas interrupts him. 

Dean’s mouth is dry. “You’re… gonna have to tell me how much of that you caught?”

“Bits and pieces,” Cas says. “Not everything, I don’t think. You were thinking about… last night, but that wasn’t… I was asking about Ezekiel. The loudest thing I heard was… you _wanted_ this case? To keep me away from him?”

“Cas--”

“You lied,” Cas accuses, and Dean can’t deny it because it’s _there_ in the air around them both. “You lied about this being Sam’s idea, and--” He pulls it from Dean’s mind, “--Sam even thought you could send someone else.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad he didn’t now, if someone has to get their shit wrecked by some creepy wind gods it might as well be me.”

“Why do you have to--” Cas doesn’t finish the question, because Dean knows where he’s going with it (like he knows his own mind) and is already thinking the answer. 

_Ezekiel said it was dangerous and he’d run away and if he left Sam would die._

“Don’t make me… eavesdrop, Dean, talk to me. Something’s wrong here.”

“Everything is wrong!” Dean blurts. “ _Everything_ is wrong! Sam’s possessed by Ezekiel and they’re both on 1% battery and if I take you back to the bunker he’ll leave, and Sam’ll--” _die,_ Dean’s thought finishes for him. 

“I don’t understand.” Cas shakes his head, Dean feels compelled to mimic the movement. “Why doesn’t he want to see me? We were… not _friends_ exactly, but we were on perfectly good terms. The last I heard of him, he was a hero.” _Like you,_ Cas’ thoughts add. 

Dean tries to ignore that. He certainly doesn’t feel very heroic right about now. 

Cas goes on: “The only other angel I’ve met so far was certainly adversely impacted by the fall, but to go from that to a coward who doesn’t want to see me at all seems--”

_Unlikely,_ they both think at once. 

Is the drop in his stomach coming from himself or from Cas? 

Does it matter?

“I couldn’t leave you alone out there,” Dean says quietly, before his treacherous brain has a chance to do it for him. “I just wanted a few days to figure out what to do, and I thought we’d do a milk run and by the time I realized _this_ wasn’t _that_ it was--”

_Too late,_ they think in unison. 

Cas’ eyes are hypnotic in the bright light, with his pupils so small, those blue irises are a magnet for Dean’s attention. He tries to focus. 

Cas looks around. _A maze,_ his mind identifies out loud. 

Dean thinks to go one way, Cas thinks to go the other, and they’re both paralyzed again. 

“I think… we have to do this together,” Dean says. He points in a direction along the wall that separates them. “We gotta get out of here, and I don’t think there’s any way out but through.”

Dean closes his eyes. He can feel that Cas is doing the same -- there’s a strange sensation as though he’s closing his already closed eyes. When he opens them, they’ve settled on a direction, and, now in agreement, the motion needed to walk, and run, is smooth and easy. 

The rules are simple enough. They have to be on the same page, or they paralysis returns. The glass makes the maze harder, at first, but they both adjust to the way it looks and try to keep patient. Focusing on solving it keeps some of the more difficult and embarrassing thoughts out of Dean’s head -- he’s an old hand at ignoring a thing in favor of a more pressing thing, and it serves him flawlessly now. 

Even when they have to part, making mirrored turns away from their shared wall, Dean can close his eyes and feel Cas’ location and turn by turn, they use that to their advantage in solving the maze.

At least there’s no Minotaur. 

It might be a place outside of time, but it doesn’t feel like long before they find the exit, stumbling past the glass wall between them and looking back at the glass halls they just left. 

Relief bounces between them, magnified by the accidental telepathy, but it doesn’t last. 

The white floor disappears beneath them and they fall into a rolling landing on the bank of a river, in a dark, gray-green forest. It’s nothing like the one they just left, cold and sickly somehow, full of an oily, miserable fear and rage that permeates every leaf and pebble and drop of water. 

As if Dean didn’t already know, the wicked obsidian machete with the bone handle in his fist tells him exactly where he is. 

“Cas?”

“Purgatory, yes,” Cas answers, holding an angel blade of his own. 

“Oh hey, your beard’s back,” Dean quips, earning him a narrow-eyed scowl in return.

They instinctively maneuver back to back as the things pour out of the woods around them -- not vampires or werewolves or leviathan, but hazy scratching, clawing shapes made of wind, shown to be humanoid by the dust they kick up. 

They die when you stick ‘em with the pointy end, which is all that matters to Dean. This is more his speed. He’s in his element, ducking below one attack, and driving his blade home into one wind-stomach, causing the whole thing to evaporate. It’s actually kind of _fun,_ even as more and more of them flood into the riverbank area.

At least, that is, until Cas falls. 

“Cas!” Dean breaks away from the current struggle to run to Cas, swiping at the wind-monsters between them.

Cas tries to get to his feet but another wind-monster sinks its claws into his neck. Dean skids to his knees, panic threatening to consume him. 

It turns out that he’s worrying for no reason. The moment he touches Cas, a greenish-gold light sweeps over him and he is healed. They look at each other, confused, and then they’re back in it, Dean tumbling into position to slice the leg off the nearest wind-monster. 

Dean’s next to go down, but it goes exactly the same way -- Cas at his side and presto, the second they make contact, the wound is gone like it was never there. 

The sheer crowding of the wind-monsters grows too intense to bear. No matter how quick they are, they keep taking hits. They’re back to back, reaching behind with every parry and slash to touch skin -- wrists, hands, whatever they can reach -- and heal whatever new damage they’re taking. 

_“Oh to_ hell _with it,”_ Cas grumbles under his breath, and grabs Dean’s hand so that their fingers are clasped, as if they were a couple on a stroll in the park rather than fighting for their lives against an insubstantial horde. 

“You can fight left handed?” Dean pants. 

“Ambidextrous,” Cas answers between stabs. 

“Handy,” Dean says, unable to resist. 

He has the mental bandwidth for clever comments because hand in hand, they’re invulnerable, the same magic that heals them protecting them from harm. Dean takes a step back, but this time he doesn’t hit Cas’ back. That same greenish-yellow light sweeps outward from between them, and they pass right through one another. Without the support they’d been leaning on, both them topple and sink straight through the ground into the dark. 

Dean splashes through the surface of cold water. He opens his eyes deep underwater, nothing around him but what looks like empty, featureless open ocean. 

His chest is already burning when he starts kicking for the surface. By the time he’s close enough to think he can make it, the urge to cough or breathe is almost overpowering. He can see a figure on the other side, and he doesn’t even have to get close to know it’s Cas, somehow standing on top of the water like some Christ figure. 

He reaches the surface, but it doesn’t yield. 

Dean panics. It’s like pressing against rubber, like someone saran-wrapped the sea, and he scratches and lashes out against the barrier. Air. He needs air. He _needs_ air. _Cas, what the hell are you doing, HELP ME, DAMNIT, SHIT!_

When he blinks, he sees a flash of an image: _himself_ above the waves, outside his own body, standing motionless with his empty gaze on the sea below. 

What? 

He closes his eyes again, and he sees it, even through the purple-and-gray spikes of oxygen deprivation shooting across his vision. It’s himself, looking down, as _Cas_ writhes against the rubbery wave. 

This time he keeps his eyes closed, and moves in the water as if reaching down, not up. 

His puppet body does the same. 

It’s almost impossible to focus, with carbon dioxide setting every nerve on fire, but goddammit this would be the absolute _dumbest_ way to die when he hasn’t even cleared up whatever happened last night. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed him, or at least, he shouldn’t have kissed him before he used his fucking words for once in his stupid life and said--

His hand breaks through. Into the water or into the air, he can’t tell. His eyes are closed but it’s Cas’ hand in his, he could be comatose and still know that, and he’s pulling and being pulled at the same time, breaking through, gasping for air. 

* * *

* * *

Who is he? 

He reaches down and touches his own chest, confused, trying to establish if he has a body at all.

He does. He fumbles with dead leaves, browns and reds crumbling under his (their) hands. The third thing is control of his limbs and torso, which he achieves enough to sit up in the golden light of the clearing, though he has to be very deliberate about it, one muscle group at a time. After that there is understanding, suffusing his veins and going to his head like wine. 

He is one, and two, at the same time. 

“Oh good,” says Notus, “you’re awake.”

“We thought you might not have made it,” Boreas drones. 

“Gauri would have been angry,” notes Notus.

“...But not _that_ angry,” assures Boreas.

“We might have been scolded,”

“...Probably not punished, though.”

Mouth. He has a mouth. He can speak. He looks up through temporary eyes at the two gods, who he’s fairly sure have switched masks. 

His first words in a low, multi-layered voice, are, “Your _mother_ did this to you?”

“Oh yes,” says Boreas, dully. 

“The storms were terrible.” Notus grins. It sounds like a fond memory when he says. “Especially for the sailors.”

Right. Because they’re winds. What else would you get when you put winds together?

He is still on the ground. Things bounce around inside him. Apologies and forgiveness pop in his chest like fireworks. Standing is a daunting task. 

A jingling sound turns his head. 

Gauri approaches, flanked by Oko and Pomona. 

Firmly stoic until now, Oko takes one look at the situation, tips his head back, and laughs and laughs. Around the clearing, his lantern-bees shiver with joy. Oko nods his approval to Notus and Boreas. 

“A fine judgment indeed,” praises Oko. 

Gauri glances over at him, her mask gone, and her face a sour twist. “Don’t _encourage_ them, Oko. Moving on… Pomona?” She indicates. 

Pomona steps forward, similarly unmasked, her face beautiful but flushed, her eyes rimmed with pink. She’s been crying. “I apologize,” she says.

“Not just to them,” Gauri says. 

Pomona moves so her back is to the edge of the clearing and she can see as many guests as possible. “Everyone--” She waits a moment as attention trickles in, and once enough faces have turned to look, she says, “I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”

There is some nodding, mostly everyone goes back to whatever conversations they were having. That’s apparently the end of it.

“Why?” He says from the ground. 

She looks down at him fondly. “No one pours beet-wine on Veles’ roots anymore, hunters. It is the fate of all of us, of what we are, to flicker and fragment and fade. Normally we keep watch of one another, and end others' misery before it gets too great. I was charged with this role, for Veles, but…” She looks down at the ground, clearly struggling to avoid a new round of crying. 

Pomona gathers herself. “This land is cold to us, it is unforgiving. No one understands us but us. As different as we are, we are a kind of family. Every loss makes the next one harder. This one was too hard for me. Perhaps you understand.”

He does, intimately. He pulls away from himself a little, a sense of _Dean_ twisting uncomfortably before merging again with the rest. 

A god approaches Pomona, his skin striped with shades of tea and maroon. His posture is kind, and he offers her a clay cup, which she takes with gratitude. A sense of _Cas_ inside says that his name is Acan, and he is a god of wine. 

Pomona adds, “Veles was the one who started our little… support group.” She laughs, then. “I don’t think any of us were ready to say goodbye.”

“We are now,” Gauri says. “We only ask that you permit us to do so with some measure of dignity. Of course, before the night is over, I am willing to show you proof that we have ended it.”

A feeling bubbles up through him. “I… trust you, apparently,” he says, in conflict with himself. 

“I make no promises, hunters, and no deals, but I understand your position and appreciate that trust. The… side-effects… of your contact with the winds’ power will last until sunrise. For that time, you may safely partake of our food and drink.” Gauri’s voice is warm and musical, but she sounds tired. 

She starts to walk away, but then turns back. “Notus, Boreas, would you separate them already? It’s a bit ridiculous.”

With matching amiable shrugs, Notus and Boreas each grasp a side of the merged masks, and pull them apart. 

He is ripped in two, which is startling, but it doesn’t hurt. 

Around them, the revelers are pouring one another drinks, and with cups in hand, they file between the trees toward the little side-clearing with the golden tent, where Gauri went before. The festive atmosphere remains, but the change in its purpose can be keenly felt. It is a wake, now, a loving farewell.

Castiel and Dean lock eyes, and remain that way, regarding one another in silence as they get their bearings. 


	5. Push, Meet Shove

  
  


The little fire is clearly a bit magical, the orange flame streaked through with purple from time to time. The cozy smell of wood-smoke fills the small ring of trees. When they first wandered in here (feeling a bit odd alone in the main glade) Dean breathed deeply through his nose, and Castiel could see some of the tension fall from his shoulders. 

No chairs are present, not so much as a cushion or a stump or a smooth rock, so, too tired to stand, a silent agreement is reached to just sit cross-legged on the ground. They wind up close enough that Dean’s right knee bumps against Castiel’s left.

“You’re really going to drink that?” Castiel asks. He’s holding his own cup, but he still hasn’t entirely made up his mind about it. 

It isn’t as if he doesn’t know what it is --  balché is Acan’s specialty, and even now it doesn’t feel as if it was that long ago, to Castiel, that humans were drinking a watered-down version on a regular basis. He’s finding that he  _ can  _ access most of his angelic memories, it just takes a little more associating, like reading a book instead of absorbing it instantly. 

“C’mon,” Dean appeals, “you heard the goddess. Chance of a lifetime.”

“I’ve had it before,” Castiel says. “It’s fermented honey infused with tree bark.”

“Okay, Mr. Worldwide, but you don’t know what it tastes like, do you? Might as well have been a glass of water to you.”

“...That… is a fair point.”

“Should we toast?” Dean suggests, “ I mean, weird doesn’t  _ begin  _ to describe this whole thing, but it doesn’t seem like anybody wants to kill us at the moment, and the problem is getting solved, so… uh, to a job well done? Sort of?”

They clink clay cups and have a sip. It’s fine. It’s bitter, but Castiel is discovering a fondness for bitter flavors, and the feeling of alcohol sliding down his throat invokes a kind of nostalgia for the sensation of smiting something.  _ Clean,  _ is how he would describe it. 

“Dude,” Dean says, coughing slightly and looking at Castiel as if he’s done something impressive, “That is a  _ burn.  _ You are  _ stone cold,  _ man. How is it you can drink _ this _ and not rum?”

There’s a moment, then -- a silence, but not the brick-in-the-stomach silences they’d been having before. Something uncertain and hesitant passes between them, to Castiel it feels like gravity’s weakened and his insides are floating. 

Notus and Boreas may have removed them from their singular state, but the  _ side-effects,  _ as Gauri said, still linger, and they’re still catching little crumbs of emotion and thought off of one another. 

Things aren’t the way Castiel feared, he knows that much, but he’s only getting non-verbals, flickers of images and sensations, and he wants to understand, and (perhaps an even stronger desire) to be understood.

“How long?” He asks quietly. 

This is the most important thing. From this, the rest will become clear. 

Dean nods, like he figured this was headed this way. “It’s not… I get how it looks. Like I’m all… like I suddenly… you know, ‘cause of the whole human thing, but it wasn’t that.” He stops and rubs his face with both hands for a second. “Jesus, this is difficult. Give me a second.”

Castiel gets the sense he’s lining up words like a museum curator, and remains silent to allow for the required concentration. 

“Awhile, alright?” Dean finally says. “Years. If I had to pin it down, and, you know, fair question -- maybe when you came to me for help with Raphael. We were in the car, I was thinking... going toe to toe with an  _ archangel,  _ talk about poking a bear, this is totally insane, even for me, why am I doing this? And then I looked over, and…”

A flush of warmth sweeps the clearing and a cloud of sparks swirls from the campfire. Dean shrugs as he goes a bit pink in the face, unaccustomed to the air around him betraying how he feels. 

“What about you?” Dean asks. 

“It’s… complicated,” Castiel admits. 

“Yeah, well, you got to read  _ my  _ diary, it’s only fair for _ you _ to spill.”

He isn’t lying. It  _ is  _ complicated. There’s a lot to sift through, memories slashed and burned like jungle cleared for farmland, disassembled and pieced back together, walls built around inconvenient feelings, doubt and love knitted together with punishment and torture. 

“When you saved the town,” Finding the words is a careful business, separating wheat from chaff. “I think that opened the door. Though, what really stands out was that night when you told me… not to change.” He looks down at his human hands. “I suppose I failed at that.”

“You know why I said that?” Dean’s eyes are the only green in a sea of red and orange.

Castiel doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to, his inquisitiveness and anticipation is out ahead of him, jumping off his skin whether he wants it to or not.

Dean looks into the fire, enfolded in memory. “Zach had sent me to that shitty alternate future, and you were a mess, and it was  _ my _ fault… other-me, I mean. And I was so scared I’d drag you down. That you’d end up like that because of me. And even now, I’m… I mean, here we are, you’re human. Just like in the vision, and--”

“That’s not your fault,” Castiel’s voice is firm with conviction. If he closes his eyes he can see a flash of the images remembered. 

“I mean, isn’t it? I mean, you said it yourself, a million times,  _ doing this for you, because of you,  _ etcetera etcetera.”

“I made my choices.”

“I’m sure _ that _ Cas would have said the same,” Dean’s almost scolding, now. 

Irritation makes the flames judder. 

“I won’t pretend I would have chosen to be human,” says Castiel, “and I have regrets. I  _ certainly _ have a newfound respect for you and Sam. These feelings are overwhelming, all of them. But the added volume does provide some  _ clarity.” _

“That’s exactly the problem,” Dean says, words curled with fear and frustration. “That’s why I never… alright look, I love you. Okay? I mean, you already knew, but--and yeah, _ right now _ you’re saying you feel the same way I do -- and after all that Alice in Wonderland crap back there, obviously I got the message -- but now I gotta be a selfish asshole and ask what happens when  _ Cas gets his groove back _ ? Because you will, you’ll be an angel again, and whatever you’re feeling now, it’ll be…”

“Muted?” Castiel offers, almost sarcastically putting voice to Dean’s anxiety. “Made optional?”

“Yeah. And that’s why I never--” He interrupts himself. “I didn’t _ like _ that you were  _ human,  _ I liked that you were… I don’t know, nervous, like I was. Like there were stakes. Like you couldn’t just stop giving a shit if caring got inconvenient.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“And when you get control over the feelings knob again, where does that leave me? God, listen to me, ugh.” He takes a bigger drink of the  balché as if trying to get the taste of vulnerability out of his mouth. “I was never scared you would reject me, Cas. I was scared you’d be totally on board but never really know what it  _ meant. _ ”

“Dean,” Castiel narrows his gaze, not as unblinking as it once was, but not too far removed. “Naomi brought all of her  _ considerable _ power and skill to the mission of keeping my emotions and loyalties in check, and what happened after purgatory -- that was her  _ second  _ attempt since we met, if you’ll recall.”

“Bible camp,” Dean  _ does  _ recall, a little dry-throated. 

“Yes. For _millennia_ she was largely successful, yet when _you_ are involved, her work always fails the moment it is truly tested. Did you never once consider why that might be?”

Dean’s mouth hangs slightly. Not for the first time, Castiel finds himself distracted by Dean’s lips. He wouldn’t switch off the way he feels now if he could, but he knows there was a time when he would have, and _ still couldn’t.  _

Castiel says, “You don’t have to worry about stakes, Dean. I lo--”

But he does not finish. 

A silver blade bursts out through Dean’s chest. It appears like a magic trick, between two ribs. Piercing from behind, it rends flesh and cloth alike. Castiel scrambles backward as blood gathers and pools and forces itself out around the weapon.

Dean looks down in mild confusion. His mouth is still open, it gently forms the ghost of the word  _ what,  _ but he does not say anything out loud. 

It feels like trying to run through marmalade, thinking like this. As an angel, Castiel could absorb and react to something like this in an imperceptible instant, and now he’s trapped moving at the speed of this human brain. 

The knife twists, and the attacker appears. 

Earlier, a lifetime ago and just a few hours prior, Castiel and Dean argued, and Castiel felt a human sort of anger -- at least, he  _ thought _ . Now, he reevaluates. What he feels now dwarfs that sensation, makes it a speck of dust by comparison. Something white-hot punches up through his body. 

It comes out his mouth on the name, “Jehoel.”

“Castiel,” Jehoel answers, smooth as silk, with a tiny smile on his face. He punctuates the greeting by dragging the blade back out through the hole it made. He slides the blade into Dean’s neck, this time, for good measure, and withdraws it once more. 

The bleeding worsens dramatically as he falls, a flood of red-black soaking the leaves. Ragged, wet attempts at breath scrape through what’s left of Dean’s throat. He’s only marginally conscious, with, what, minutes to live? If that? 

It is a terribly human instinct that makes Castiel grit his teeth and dig his nails into his palms. He reaches back and finds his own blade gone from its precarious spot between the layers of his borrowed clothes. Lost, most likely, when their strange, combined body had been thrown to the ground and torn apart, or perhaps when it was made to begin with. 

“So this is the famous Dean Winchester,” drawls Jehoel, casting a careless glance at the ground. “I admit, I was worried, which, looking back, silly, right? He’s just a human.” 

Castiel looks around the clearing as the wind kicks up, first warm, then cold. Keep him talking. He seems good at that, just keep him doing it. There must be something--

“It’s just,” Jehoel gestures with the hand holding the angel blade. “There are all these  _ stories  _ about how he’s somehow managed to kill quite a few angels--but no, just a human, much like you.”

“You came alone,” Castiel says. 

“Sort of. I mean, I told someone where I was going, but… can you blame me wanting all the credit? It’s a new world out there, Castiel. Bag you, and I’m  _ really _ in on the ground floor. And besides, you’re a brand new baby human, what could  _ you  _ possibly do to me? You couldn’t even see me hiding between planes! We only want _ you  _ for your information.

“But Dean,” Jehoel continues enjoying the sound of himself speaking. “Well… from what I hear, he’s like a bad penny -- habit of turning up, and all that, especially where you’re involved.” Jehoel stretches, shaking out the shortish ponytail in his vessel’s hair. “I feel much better now, having finished the hard part. Now all I have to do is scoop you up and take you back to Bartholo--what?”

Like Dean before him, Jehoel is interrupted. His right arm, holding the blade, flings out to one side as if grabbed and pulled by some unseen hand.

And then it is held there, by a very small whirlwind.

Castiel steadies himself, and watches the changing emotions on Jehoel’s square-jawed face -- annoyance, at first, and then growing alarm as he cannot seem to wrest his arm from the hazy grasp. 

While he’s busy with that, a matching whirlwind gets his left arm as well, and then both his feet, until he’s the spread-eagled Vitruvian Man, if Vitruvian Man wore a gray suit. 

“What trick is this, Castiel?” Jehoel snarls, ruffled for the first time.

“Not  _ his _ trick,” says Notus, flickering to Jehoel’s left. 

“Ours,” whispers Boreas.

“You know, Boreas, there’s one thing I hate more than hunters. Can you guess what it is?”

Castiel’s eye travels to the bloodied blade still clutched in Jehoel’s trapped hand. 

“Is it angels?” Boreas condescends. It isn’t a guess, not really.

“It  _ is.” _

“This hunter fellow was an angel, Notus,” Boreas points out, making Castiel take another step backward.

“He isn’t anymore,” Notus counters. “And they certainly seem to oppose one another. Now, I wouldn’t say the enemy of my enemy is my  _ friend,  _ in this case, but at least…”

“Not an enemy, per se,” finishes Boreas. 

“Precisely. And besides, we’ve been working on these two all evening.” Notus addresses Jehoel. “We were doing rather well with them, you know.”

Boreas says dreamily, “It was all very mythological.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to knock down other people’s sandcastles?” Notus hisses, kneeing Jehoel in the side, not strong enough to do a lot of real damage, but enough to make an impact. 

All Jehoel manages to say is  _ “UNHAND ME THIS INSTANT!” _

“Well, ex-angel?” Boreas turns to Castiel. 

“Yes,” Notus does the same. Did they switch masks again? “We can’t hold him forever. Are you going to kill him or not? I mean, you don’t have to, but we just thought--”

Castiel bends over Dean’s body. Blood still seeps, pulses, from his chest and throat and he is motionless, but, if he listens, Castiel can hear him struggling to breathe. He’s alive, somewhat. 

It’s enough, certainly, if this doesn’t take too long.

He straightens and plucks the silver blade from Jehoel’s hand. The vessel is about the same height as he is, and Castiel tips his head back just slightly, to peer down his nose. 

Quietly, and close, Castiel says, “If you think that  _ Dean _ has killed too many angels, I wonder what you must think of _ me. _ ”

Jehoel musters enough saliva to spit weakly. “I think you are a traitor to your kind, and that even in your current condition, you have not  _ begun  _ to be suitably punished.”

“I didn’t want to do this, for what it’s worth.” Castiel’s exhaustion comes through in his words. “I’m tired, Jehoel. Every single time, it…” There’s no easy way to explain the deep wounds that come with every angel he destroys, the scars he’ll carry until he himself is cut down. Instead of trying, he simply says, with as much emphasis as he can muster, “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t do this.”

“You  _ do  _ have a choice!” Jehoel hisses. 

“Hm,” Castiel considers. He looks down at the forest floor. Dean’s chest moves in irregular little bursts, like a rabbit in cardiac arrest. “I suppose you’re right. I do have a choice. Still, if the best predictor of future action is past behavior, then forcing me to choose between you and Dean--”

He doesn’t need grace for this. 

Muscle memory is more than enough. 

In one practiced motion, Castiel slides one of the sharpest objects that in the world against the soft flesh of Jehoel’s throat. The little hole that results is hardly bigger than a fingertip and through it, a bright white-blue light begins to slip like smoke. 

“Well, it’s foolish, at best,” Castiel hisses, inches from Jehoel’s ear and he breathes in the light until it’s gone. 

Jehoel slumps bonelessly in his wind-bonds like a limp rag, the vessel empty -- already dead, perhaps, ridden as carelessly as a demon’s possession. Notus and Boreas release him and let him crumple.

Castiel burns. 

Alien grace flames through his lungs, through his blood, through every pathway of his nerves.  _ Wrong,  _ it hisses to his heart, splashing against it and already beginning to corrode him. Still, it powers him nevertheless. He can feel the broken and shredded frames of his wings at his back, a pain much preferable to the phantom that’s followed him since he fell. 

Castiel doesn’t even look at the Winds. 

It is as easy to lift Dean now as if he were made of paper and cotton, Castiel’s renewed strength deeply, desperately wrong but wonderful all the same, because it allows him to do this:

He lifts a limp Dean by his shirt collar with one hand and supports the base of his skull with the other. 

He presses his mouth against Dean’s. 

Searing and frozen all at once, a tendril of stolen grace slips away, knitting Dean’s flesh back together, multiplying swaths of blood until it fills his veins once more, and repairing the links between neurons damaged by lack of oxygen. 

The grace does not regenerate. Instead, it leaves a smoldering ash in its wake as it goes. 

None of that matters -- Dean is whole, his feet beneath him. He pulls Cas against him, returning the kiss with a short, sharp hum. He exerts his own pressure, grasping at Castiel’s shoulders and neck, daring even to test at his lower lip with his tongue. 

They pull apart. 

“What do you know,” says Dean, a little breathless. “My own Disney princess moment. And don’t start with me, even  _ you  _ understand that reference.”

“Even we do!” Notus cackles from behind a faux-scandalized hand.

Did they switch masks again? Boreas’ smile beneath the bottom edge of his is beatific. “I love it, Notus. It was like a drama for the stage, played out just for us.”

“Like old times,” Notus agrees. “I always did prefer the ones that end well.”

“Shall we?” Boreas gestures to Notus, back to the main clearing. 

“Let’s shall. Sunrise isn’t far, and I’m _ far  _ too sober for it.”

Castiel takes a moment to be amused by the wary, derisive look on Dean’s face as he watches them go, and then turns back with unguarded concern. 

“Cas, not to be ungrateful, but is that allowed? What you did there? With the uh…” He gestures softly toward his own throat. 

“No,” Castiel says, a bit flatly. “Imagine you were injured, so you killed a man and took his arm for yourself. It is absolutely not  _ allowed  _ in any sense of the word.”

“Oh, well, don’t sugarcoat it for me or anything. Are  _ you  _ safe, at least?”

The look Castiel gives him -- apologetic and lost -- is apparently answer enough. He is very, very far from safe. 

Dean looks like he’s about to say something sharp, but then his mouth tightens into a pressed line and, after a long breath, he seems to settle on no reply. 

They weave between the trees until the first shining splinter of sun pushes up past the edge of the world, and the whole forest just _ goes _ , gods and all -- the world around them wobbles slightly, like a table with a wrong leg, and then vanishes with significantly less pomp than it appeared. 

There’s nothing but a yellowed meadow, on the other side of which is the faithful car that brought them all this way. Like many hunting expeditions, it was not a dream, but feels, in the aftermath, more than a little like it could have been. 

The air is damp and the inside of the car is cool. In the driver’s seat, Dean sits, looking out over the mist-covered grass, shoulders tensed as if he’s going to start the engine any second, but, as the seconds tick by, not actually doing it. 

“I... still love you,” Castiel says quietly after a moment’s deliberation. He adds, “I was trying to say that back, before, but it’s true now, too. You have nothing to worry about. I promise, it’s _ incredibly _ inconvenient.”

Dean’s face crinkles up the moment before he actually laughs. “Very comforting,” he says a way that’s got a top layer of sarcasm over a core of truth. “Man, now what?”

“I think you know.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighs the word out, turning the key and bringing Baby to life. 

“We’ll be smart about it,” Castiel reassures. “We won’t let him hurt Sam.”

“You got ideas?”

“A few.”

“Good. And we got all day on the road to hash ‘em out,” Dean says, just a tinge of optimism creeping into his tone. “You know it’s funny, he was so worried about the danger if you came back to the bunker, but if he’d just let you come back, you’d never have found out about any of this, and he’d probably be in better shape.”

Castiel looks out at the mountains to the west, blue and pale, rising up like a distant wave on the sea. 

That does always seem to be the way of it. Those who stand against these two, against Sam and Dean, always seem to find themselves on the receiving end of sudden misfortune sooner or later. When he really looks at the pattern, he gets this odd, queasy sense of something off-kilter, like a rotten floorboard he doesn’t want to step on, for fear that his foot will fall through to the level below.

There will be time for that later, though. 

“And after that, we get your grace back,” Dean says as if this is no less certain than the moon and tides. 

For now, Castiel is exactly where he wants to be. 


End file.
